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'Rewriting postcolonial historical representations: The case of refugees in Zimbabwe's liberation war' focuses on the historicisation of the experiences of people who were refugees during Zimbabwe's liberation war, fought between 1966 and 1980. It uses the narratives of former refugees from Mutasa and Bulilima Districts as a way of capturing their histories of the war period. When Zimbabwe attained independence in 1980, the country embarked on a historicisation project that was ably supported by a memorialization one. The aim of these twin projects was to capture the experiences of people who had either participated in the war or had been affected by it. Whilst all the other key players in that war such as the political leadership, the war veterans, the former detainees and even the ordinary peasants' experiences have been captured in these projects, there has been an absolute silence on those of people who were refugees. The same also applies to the omission of the refugee's voice in the continued regeneration of such histories that has been taking place since the year 2000 in Zimbabwe. Using the central question that asks about the experiences of displacement in Zimbabwe's liberation war, the research argues that we can only understand the totality of that war, the interactions that took place and the identities it created if the refugee figure and voice are represented on the historical record.

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF MOHAMMAD DELWAR HOSSAIN, for the Master of Arts degree in Media Theory & Research, presented on May 7, 2010 at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: FRAMING THE LIBERATION WAR OF BANGLADESH IN THE U.S. AND U.K. MEDIA: A CONTENT ANALYSIS OF THE NEW YORK TIMES AND THE TIMES (LONDON) MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Uche Onyebadi This study examined the framing of the liberation war of Bangladesh in the New York Times and the Times (London). To comprehensively look at the framing, the tones and sources of news in the newspapers have also been studied. The results suggest that both newspapers used three frames most frequently: military-conflict frame, prognostic frame and human interest frame. The findings also show that both newspapers published news stories with more neutral tone than positive and negative tones. The New York Times and the Times (London) relied mostly on official sources as the primary sources in publishing news. The present study is not only the first research on the framing of the liberation war of Bangladesh by the international print media but also a systematic research on the area. Therefore, this study is expected to open up ways of understanding the role of the international print media, especially in the U.S. and U.K., about the war. This study is also a major contribution in the field of framing research and more broadly in understanding how newspapers frame wars in their reports.

Thesis (doctoral)--Wageningen Universiteit, 2008. / "Propositions/Stellingen" ([1] leaf) inserted. Erratum slip inserted. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 207-218).

Yes / The civil war in South Sudan raises the all-too familiar problem of the crisis of state formation and nation-building in post-colonial Africa. Based on extensive field research in Sudan and South Sudan between 2005 and 2013, this chapter argues that the international response to post-independence nation-building and post-liberation-war peacebuilding was not predicated on coherent and consistent timing and sequencing. If anything, the case of South Sudan illustrates that the rather inconsistent, uncoordinated post-war peacebuilding and statebuilding, as well as the lack of domestic legitimacy and ownership of the post-liberation-war peacebuilding and nation-building interventions, aggravated the fundamental grievances leading to the outbreak of the December 2013 civil war. What is more, South Sudan demonstrates how events on the ground and the pursuit of the strategic interests of the key national, regional, and international stakeholders framed and determined the nature, scope, timing, and even the sequencing of post-war peacebuilding and nation-building.

La Partition de l’Inde (1947) et la Guerre de libération du Bangladesh (1971) sont deux moments de transition qui exposent la violence de constructions nationales post-coloniales. Les actes perpétrés sur une base ethno-religieuse ont donné lieu à des récits privés pourtant occultés au profit de récits nationaux hégémoniques auto-légitimants. Ces récits attestent tout particulièrement de l’instrumentalisation de figures et de corps de femmes comme lieu de marquage de conflits communautaires. Face au silence imposé par les divers appareils d’État patriarcaux, trois générations de romancières ont cherché à renverser les récits hégémoniques en Inde, au Pakistan et au Bangladesh, par le biais d’une fiction romanesque caractérisée par son incoercibilité et son engagement féministe. Leur écriture de fiction répond à la violence de la fracture de l’Histoire par une poétique de la fragmentation, dont le tout dresse un portrait obscène, monstrueux et carnavalesque de la formation d’États-nations contemporains. Cette écriture romanesque, qu’elle soit sous-continentale ou diasporique, résiste à toute forme de frontières (idéologiques, littéraires, commerciales, etc.), et se consolide par sa prise de position à la fois complexe et engagée. La poétique de fragmentation est amenée par des phénomènes linguistiques, littéraires, sociologiques et politiques. Ce corpus se compose de romans couvrant l’ensemble de la deuxième moitié du XXe siècle, publiés (chronologiquement) par Jyotirmoyee Devi, Anis Kidwai, Mumtaz Shah Nawaz, Attia Hosain, Amrita Pritam, Sophia Mustafa, Bapsi Sidhwa, Anita Rau Badami , Shauna Singh Baldwin Meena Arora Nayak, Sorayya Khan, Kamila Shamsie et Tahmima Anam. / The Partition of India (1947) and the Bangladesh Liberation War (1971) are two transitory moments which reveal the violence of post-colonial nation-building. The acts performed upon an ethno-religious basis have given rise to many private stories, themselves stifled by self-legitimating national master narratives. These stories particularly highlight the instrumentalisation of the idea and the bodies of women in carrying out communal conflict. Three generations of women novelists have sought to break the silence imposed by patriarchal State apparatuses and religious radicalism. They turn to the impetuousness of the literary genre of the novel in order to thwart Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi master narratives. As such they write back to the violent fracture of History, through a poetics of the fragment, and together draw an obscene, monstrous and carnival-like portrait of contemporary Nation-States. Such novels, whether sub-continental or diasporic, resist all forms of borders (whether ideological, literary, commercial, etc.), driven instead by their commitment to contradiction. The fragmentation which defines them is all at once linguistic, literary, sociological and political. Our study comprises novels written (chronologically) by Jyotirmoyee Devi, Anis Kidwai, Mumtaz Shah Nawaz, Attia Hosain, Amrita Pritam, Sophia Mustafa, Bapsi Sidhwa, Anita Rau Badami , Shauna Singh Baldwin Meena Arora Nayak, Sorayya Khan, Kamila Shamsie and Tahmima Anam.

A lot of research on the Shona novel has focussed on the influence of orature and the Bible. It has also focused on the influence that the Southern Rhodesia Literature Bureau had on its development. This research has endeavoured to highlight the reliability and validity of the Shona novel as a historical document. The dependability of the novel as an alternative site from which history can be deciphered is corroborated by historical documents. The history that comes out in the Shona novels that have been studied covers the pre-colonial period right up to the post-independence period. Among the issues that come up in the research that relate to history are the Rozvi state under Chirisamhuru, the economic activities in pre-colonial Shona society that include raids for cattle and women as well as hunting and external trade. The Shona novel has also proved historically reliable in as far as it relates to the navigability of the Save River. It has highlighted the living conditions and the wages that Blacks got in colonial Rhodesia and exposed the land imbalances that came into existence because of the Land Apportionment Act of 1930, which left Blacks living on the periphery and in overcrowded, hot and dry reserves that were hardly fertile. The Rhodesian authorities, as the novels have exposed, denied most Blacks access to education. When schools were provided, they were poorly staffed and those on farms functioned more as labour pools than schools. The novel has also proved its dependability when it highlights the early days of the nationalist movement and the unilateral declaration of independence of 1965. It has also brought to the fore the birth of the armed struggle and the Rhodesian responses to it. The Rhodesians responded politically and militarily. Politically, it was through the Internal Settlement Agreement of March 1978. Militarily they moved people into 'protected villages' in an effort to deny guerrillas access to food and clothing. The novel also highlights the post-independence period especially political intolerance. / African Languages / D.Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

A lot of research on the Shona novel has focussed on the influence of orature and the Bible. It has also focused on the influence that the Southern Rhodesia Literature Bureau had on its development. This research has endeavoured to highlight the reliability and validity of the Shona novel as a historical document. The dependability of the novel as an alternative site from which history can be deciphered is corroborated by historical documents. The history that comes out in the Shona novels that have been studied covers the pre-colonial period right up to the post-independence period. Among the issues that come up in the research that relate to history are the Rozvi state under Chirisamhuru, the economic activities in pre-colonial Shona society that include raids for cattle and women as well as hunting and external trade. The Shona novel has also proved historically reliable in as far as it relates to the navigability of the Save River. It has highlighted the living conditions and the wages that Blacks got in colonial Rhodesia and exposed the land imbalances that came into existence because of the Land Apportionment Act of 1930, which left Blacks living on the periphery and in overcrowded, hot and dry reserves that were hardly fertile. The Rhodesian authorities, as the novels have exposed, denied most Blacks access to education. When schools were provided, they were poorly staffed and those on farms functioned more as labour pools than schools. The novel has also proved its dependability when it highlights the early days of the nationalist movement and the unilateral declaration of independence of 1965. It has also brought to the fore the birth of the armed struggle and the Rhodesian responses to it. The Rhodesians responded politically and militarily. Politically, it was through the Internal Settlement Agreement of March 1978. Militarily they moved people into 'protected villages' in an effort to deny guerrillas access to food and clothing. The novel also highlights the post-independence period especially political intolerance. / African Languages / D.Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

This dissertation intervenes in the fields of South Asian Masculinity Studies, Affect Studies, Critical Disability Studies, Feminist Cultural Studies, and Trauma as well as Memory Studies. The focus of this project is on the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, a nine-month long war between East Pakistan and West Pakistan, which started on 26 March 1971 and ended on 16 December 1971 with Bangladesh, former East Pakistan, emerging as an independent nation. I concentrate on East Pakistani/Bangladeshi muktijoddhas (freedom fighters) who fought in the war, and birangonas (survivors of sexual violence) who were abducted by military officials and their collaborators. Drawing on political speeches, parliamentary debates, press statements, and governmental news reports, I examine how these sources create a narrative of the manly muktijoddha who demonstrates his masculinity through exhibiting courage and disavowing his pain. I further analyze memoirs by freedom fighters who complicate this image of the courageous muktijoddha through recollecting moments of pain and fear during combat. Significant to my analysis are also survivor testimonies of gender, physical, and sexual violence of wartime women in East Pakistan/Bangladesh, which oppose a more singular nationalist rhetoric of the 1971 war that celebrates the male muktijoddha while marginalizing women’s experiences. I delve into how birangona testimonies narrate the women’s trauma of sexual violence and of witnessing their daughters’ abuse by wartime soldiers. In analyzing women’s stories, I highlight the importance of listening to the voices of birangona-mas (survivors who are also mothers), and thereby question the nationalist mythologizing of the muktijoddha’s mother who sends her son to war. In exploring the muktijoddha, the muktijoddha’s mother, and the birangona/birangona-ma, I argue that there are multiple alternative readings of the war that are suppressed by nationalist discourse, which warrant recognition within Liberation War and South Asian history. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / My dissertation focuses on the Bangladesh Liberation War that took place between East Pakistan and West Pakistan from 26 March 1971 till 16 December 1971. This war led to the independence of Bangladesh, former East Pakistan. During the war, Bangladeshi governmental documents and nationalist speeches portrayed the East Pakistani/Bangladeshi freedom fighter or muktijoddha as an ideal masculine figure who fought against West Pakistani soldiers with courage. I analyze memoirs by freedom fighters who show how they both conform to, and disrupt the nationalist portrayal of the courageous muktijoddha. I also examine personal recollections of birangonas (women survivors of sexual violence) who speak of their trauma, reveal narratives of their daughter’s abuse by soldiers and their collaborators, and provide a reading of the wartime woman that challenges the nation’s vested interest in the ideal male muktijoddha. Overall, my project encourages people to rethink the Liberation War from the perspectives of wartime men and women survivors who have witnessed violence and mutilation firsthand.

The research examines the interface of history and fiction. It predominantly focuses on historical fiction on the Zimbabwean liberation war written in Shona, Ndebele and English and published after the attainment of political independence in 1980. Historical fiction on the liberation war is both biographical and autobiographical. Consequently, the study comes to the conclusion that historical fiction is a veritable stakeholder in the history issue in Zimbabwe. It becomes another type or source of history that cannot be papered over when dealing with the nation’s history. In a nation where liberation war history is not only taken seriously, but is also a vigorously contested terrain, historical fiction becomes part of those discursive contestations, particularly on nation and nationalism. It is in this regard that the study problematises the interface of history and fiction by reasoning that historical fiction published in the early 1980s largely advances a state-centered perspective which views history, nation and nationalism in positive terms. This discourse uses history in order to argue for a single nation that derives its identity from the heroic and symbolic guerrilla characters. Nationalism is exclusively presented as humanising and as being the sole legitimate political brand capable of leading the nation. On the other hand, historical fiction written in English and published in the late 1980s onwards represents alternative historical truths that contest nationalism and debunk official definitions of nation. This discourse leads to the pluralisation of perspectives on nation and nationalism. The focus on historical fiction published in three languages used in Zimbabwe is a conscious attempt to transcend ethnicity in critical scholarship. Discussing novels in Shona, Ndebele and English, which are the three main languages in Zimbabwe, makes it possible for the study to draw reasoned conclusions on the bearing of time, language, region and background among others on historical representation. This undertaking brings to the fore how literature responding to similar historical processes appears moderately conjunctive and principally disjunctive. Correspondingly, it also shows various trends in the development of liberation war fiction in Zimbabwe. / African Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)