FATHERS AND CHILDREN OF IVORIAN INDEPENDENCE: METAPHORS OF KINSHIP AND GENERATION IN THE MAKING OF A NATIONAL TIME

Abstract

ABSTRACTI look at the image of a generation of youth as the vanguard force of an ongoing struggle for independence and a new nation on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Ivorian independence. Drawing upon the theoretical framework of Reinhart Koselleck, I explore the making of national time as layered temporality, with generations not succeeding each other but rather coexisting. My analysis of expressions and performances of ‘doing being youth’ helps in understanding how the label ‘youth’ is used to mark membership in or exclusion from a collective. I examine the process of how ‘youth’ is made into a meaningful marker and how and why political actors engage in performances of ‘being youth’. I embed this analysis in a genealogy of the nation as a metaphoric kin group and examine the ways in which Ivorians belong to and actively create ‘generations’, referring to independence as alieu de mémoire. The paper explores the cultural expressions of contemporary Ivorian politics and analyses performances of the past in the present and the positions young people may take or are given in the nation's past, present and future.