Abstracts of contributions written in Arabic

Dr Majdi Eljizouli, The Bloated Identities: Inventing a Country  within the Adversity of Underdevelopment.

In the process of conceiving the essence of identity, the construct "the center and the periphery" was widely accepted as a vehicle for illuminating a deeply rooted crisis engulfing the economical social, political and cultural facets of life in our country. In the Sudanese version the concept of identity is fully clad  ethnic and cultural attire. Consequently, an ethnic and cultural division of the people of the Sudan into the evil Arabized camp and the good Arabs, an oversimplification of a long history of social conflict  which has worked hard to amass and set apart people along the lines of ethnic and cultural identities. This critique is not meant to belittle the fierce righteous struggle of the Sudanese peripheries against the center. This struggle  represents a movement of  progressive awareness and a forceful  dissent against an historical exclusion  from the zones of wealth , of which they are the  originators and from power  structure  of  which they are the backbone. What is intended is the buttressing of intellectual perspicacity. This is so vital because the problem is not just in the ethnic , religious , cultural or linguistic diversity of the Sudan but essentially in the imbalanced development and the ensuing reciprocal  lack of trust.

The analytical approach adopted by Dr. El-Jouzoli  invites us to identify a society map infested with historical ethnic , cultural , linguistic and religious cleavages, which is there as a background for social and class segregation and denial  which was exacerbated  and worsened as part of the process of capitalist consolidation  of power. According to this understanding, it is possible to scrutinize the shared elements ,concealed  under the shroud of identities,. It flows like  a river of blood, connecting between the last chapter of civil war in Southern Sudan, 1983-2005, which has spilled over to infect the Nouba Mounts and Angasna area, and the war still raging in the Darfur region together with the armed struggle in Eastern Sudan and other protests  in Kordfan and the Northern provinces.

Dr Majdi Eljizouli is a Sudanese writer and researcher. He is the Vice-Secretary-General of the Union of Sudanese Writers.

2/ Mohamed Osman Obeid (Deraij), Darfur: The Sudanese State and Racialized Violence:

This paper ventures to approach and interpret the state violence against the groups identified , according to the established discourse of power, as African , negro or ethnic " minorities" , a phenomenon  nomenclatured by the author as "Racialized Violence" The attempt is restricted to the Drafur question .

The argument is posited along three principal facets:

A.   The desecrations inflicted upon people by the state  institution as " colonial coercive mechanism"

B.  The complete intellectual and potential  poverty  of the elites who assumed and still assume power  and its failure to create bottom-line harmony between the different  peoples of the area , to work as the foundation step in a road map for " a Sudanese nationality" which guarantees all the rights and respect for its' citizens.

C.  State sovereignty is but the right of the state to inflict death on its' own people.

The paper consider the question the state violence, and especially " the racialized violence" along the above three facets.

Mohamed Osman Obeid (Deraij) is a Sudanese researcher and activist living ins a Sudanese researcher and activist living in Canada.

3/ Dr Patricia Musa, Away from Metaphor: Conflict as a cultural identity; an ethnological view of the cultural exchange in Sudan.

Conflict between cultures is not a mere stylistic metaphor. It is a tangible fact ,in the literal sense of the word, especially in that part of the Sudan, where extremely  distinct  and dissimilar ethnic and cultural groups, co-exist . It is a phenomenon, observed by the writer from firsthand personal encounter, during her field work in west Sudan regions, and particularly in the southern Kordofan region, where two distinct ethnic groups, distinct as far as ethnic origin: the cultural frame of reference and the means and ways of life and social organization  are concerned. The two groups are namely the Baggara (Hawazma tribe) and the Nouba group (the Nyemang  tribe) who have inhabited the region for more than  three centuries . The Hawazma are nomadic Muslim cattle breeders, with a history of mixed marriages with the Arabs. The Nyemang are the indigenous inhabitants of the Nouba Mountains in the region.

The example of "wrestling" provided by the author is a model of peaceful cultural exchange between the two ethnically, culturally and socially distinct groups for the very positive values it represents for the future relationship between the diverse races and cultural groups of Africa. It is an example that inspires optimism, at a time where the raging fires of ethnically motivated conflicts spread civil wars and genocidal fighting between the children of the continent and waste its natural potentials, procreating poverty and underdevelopment in its societies.

Dr. Patricia Musa is a French researcher in ethnology  interested in studying cultural interchange and blending in Africa through popular heritage and oral literature  in western Sudan .She has obtained her PhD in the National Institute for Oriental Languages and   Civilizations , department of African studies . Her thesis title is " family fables   : manifestations of family relationships in the parables of Baggara and Nouba in Sudan"