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SUMMARY:Rogaia Abusharaf on 'Debating Darfur'
DESCRIPTION:Rogaia Abusharaf\, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Georgetown University School of ‎Foreign Service in Qatar and CIRS Faculty Fellow 2012-2013\, led a Focused Discussion on ‎‎“Debating Darfur in the World” on April 24\, 2013. The lecture focused on the narratives that ‎have been used by the Sudanese government\, Western media\, and diaspora communities to make ‎sense of the Darfur crisis. Reporting on the extent of violence\, Abusharaf recounted that “during ‎the seven years of strife in Darfur\, more than 2.7 million persons have been forcibly displaced. ‎Human rights organizations estimate the death toll at 400\,000\,” although\, she said\, this figure is ‎significantly higher if we take into account those who died as a result of displacement and other ‎circumstances related to the conflict.‎ \n \n \nThe Darfur crisis has become a linchpin for various interest groups\, including Western public ‎figures and media outlets\, as a cause célèbre often to further ulterior political and ideological ‎goals. In this context\, the narrative used to describe the crisis often echoes that of the WWII ‎Holocaust as it is rooted in notions of ethnicity and ethnic cleansing. “Yet\,” Abusharaf argued\, ‎‎“the deployment of the Arab versus African formulation as the sole explanatory model divorced ‎from other sociopolitical forces shaping society in Darfur is a serious distortion\,” as these are ‎unstable ethnic categories that do not neatly subscribe to Darfurian power and identity structures. ‎Darfur has a long history of intermarriage and reciprocity between the hybrid ethnic groups\, and ‎so this strict categorization of Arab versus African cannot be sustained except through the ‎epistemic violence of reductionist and ideologically-loaded political narratives. She continued by ‎noting that “ethnicity\, when politically mobilized and manipulated\, camouflages other ‎fundamental dimensions of the conflict\, such as banditry\, land-tenure systems\, environmental ‎degradation\, arms proliferation and militarization\, border politics\, and systemic marginality.” In ‎the past\, “alterity did not prompt massacres;” in the current climate\, however\, it is used as ‎justification for violence\, either deliberately or inadvertently by irresponsible actors.‎ \n \n \nAs judgment for the atrocities taking place in Darfur\, President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir was ‎issued with an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court. The warrant elicited both pro ‎and anti Al-Bashir sentiments\, locally and within the Sudanese diaspora abroad. The responses of ‎these groups differ markedly from each other as the groups align themselves with different ‎strategic interests. Citing her ethnographic research conducted at Darfur-related conferences\, ‎rallies\, and meetings\, Abusharaf explained how political and cultural identities produce radically ‎different discourses on Darfur. In the United States\, for example\, questions of race and gender ‎are at the forefront of framing the Darfur crisis\, whereas the diasporic discourses annunciated in ‎Doha are more aligned with narratives of reconciliation and social cohesion. ‎ \n \n \nDarfur has thus become the site upon which notions of anti-imperialism and victimization are ‎simultaneously enacted by pro and anti Al-Bashir camps\, respectively. These narratives have been ‎broadcast in the international media as public theatrical performances where Darfur is ‎simultaneously portrayed as resistance to neocolonial international forces as well as to domestic ‎ethnic marginalization.‎ \n \n \nAs a final thought\, Abusharaf commented that there are current concerted efforts taking place in ‎Doha to address the Darfur crisis. This is a loose organization of interested people that do not ‎classify themselves according to strict ethnic divisions\, but along the lines of an active civil ‎society. “In the midst of passions\, pity\, propaganda\, and polarization\, debating Darfur requires a ‎special objectivity and distance from approaches that enlarge rifts and fragmentation that keep ‎the tragedy going\,” she concluded.‎ \n \n \nRogaia M. Abusharaf is the CIRS SFS-Q Faculty Fellow\, and an Associate Professor of ‎Anthropology at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar. She is the author ‎of Transforming Displaced Women in Sudan: Politics and the Body in a Squatter Settlement ‎‎(University of Chicago Press 2009); Female Circumcision: Multicultural Perspectives(Ed.). ‎‎(University of Pennsylvania Press 2006) and Wanderings (Cornell University Press 2002). She is ‎the editor of a 2010 special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly (Duke University Press). She was a ‎recipient of Postdoctoral and Senior fellowships at Durham University in the U.K. and at Brown ‎and Harvard Universities. Her work was supported by Guggenheim Foundation\, the Royal ‎Anthropological Institute\, the Sir William Luce Memorial Fellowship\, Andrew Mellon and MIT ‎Center for International Studies and Rockefeller Bellagio Study Center\, Qatar University ‎College of Arts and Sciences.‎  \n \n \nArticle by Suzi Mirgani\, Manager and Editor for CIRS Publications.
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/rogaia-abusharaf-debating-darfur/
CATEGORIES:CIRS Faculty Lectures,Regional Studies
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