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SUMMARY:HISTORIANS’ ALLEGIANCES: NIGERIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE POLITIC
 S OF BELONGING - Dr. Samaila Suleiman Department of History Bayero Univers
 ity\, Kano  
DTSTART:20200130T170000Z
DTEND:20200130T180000Z
UID:TALK138484@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:89944
DESCRIPTION:Despite their epistemological posturing as impartial producers
  of knowledge\, historians’ subjectivities are always implicated in thei
 r preferred themes and the narrative and conceptual choices they make. The
  end of British colonial rule in 1960 brought a number of changes in the w
 ays Nigerian historians and the public engage with the past\, resulting in
  the deregulation of cultural and historical production. The penchant for 
 a glorious past to buttress the clamor for independence allowed for a mome
 ntary grand narrative that quickly waned into a multitude of regional narr
 atives in tandem with a toxic politics of belonging in the postcolonial er
 a. The Civil War\, economic recession and the explosion of violent identit
 y politics between 1980s and 2000s\, especially overcitizenship rights and
  resource control challenged the position of the Nigerian state as dominan
 t custodian of history because its definition of Nigerian history was riva
 led and contested by emerging regional histories and marginal narratives. 
 The shifting allegiances of historians led to the production of revisionis
 t and politically motivated historiographies shaped by four subnational fo
 rms of belonging: Islam and the politics of jihad amongthe Hausa-Fulani\; 
 the politics of ethnicity in Yoruba land\; the politics of genocide and wa
 r trauma among the Igbo\; and the discourse of marginalization of minoriti
 es in the Middle Belt and Niger-Delta regions. In this presentation\, I po
 sit that the notion of Nigerian history\, as a grand narrative\, is entire
 ly relative to the politics and structure of Nigerian society.\n 
LOCATION:Seminar Room S2\, Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambrid
 ge CB3 9DT
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