Matthew Sebastian

This paper considers how documentation and memorialization initiatives curate historical narratives in contemporary northern Uganda since the collapse of the Juba peace talks in 2008. Taking the collapse of political settlement between the Government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army as my starting point while staying attuned to the history of humanitarian activity in the region, I address how these initiatives produce new ways of thinking about the future of a conflict that is not yet past. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted annually between 2009 and 2016, I argue that the archive here is a speculative project of humanitarian governance that attempts to map the availability of political claims in a time of political uncertainty. The construction of the archive in northern Uganda operates within a larger discourse of peace-after-war, an expectation that after war comes a more productive, participatory future characterized by peace. And yet, the sort of humanitarian archival projects concerned here are perpetually incomplete, forthcoming, and emergent. Juxtaposing the lived experiences of Acholi men and women against the expectation that documenting these experiences will bring lasting peace to the region provokes new questions about the contingencies of documentary practices and the indeterminacy of their subsequent uses.

This paper considers the ways in which young people in northern Uganda between the ages of fifteen and thirty negotiate their futures in a post-conflict present. There has been a massive upsurge in governmental and non-governmental projects to develop youth into “a future productive force” (Uganda’s finance minister: 2012), particularly in northern Uganda where protracted conflict has been present throughout the full span of their lives. Taking one such state-led project as the basis for this paper, I demonstrate how youth are constructed as sites of intervention in humanitarian and peace-building programs and how these programs attempt to place these youth and their communities within a digestible historical narrative of conflict and its aftermath. I argue that an attention to modes of bureaucratic care that seek to transform the future of their young subject-beneficiaries elucidates important forms of state power in the aftermath of protracted civil conflict. Seen through this lens, we can better understand the ways in which the future is articulated through an interaction between peace-building projects in northern Uganda and the everyday lives of Acholi youth.

This paper examines how narratives about peace and war circulate among youth engaged with Invisible Children in contemporary northern Uganda and the United States. Central to the organization’s rapid growth over the past decade has been its ability to mobilize tens of thousands of American youth through adeptly produced media campaigns. Simultaneously, its programs have, as the organization’s name suggests, always made youth the object of their interventions in Uganda and, now, the larger region. Based on nine years of participant observation in the United States and five years of fieldwork in northern Uganda, this paper considers youth as a conjoining category through which popular narratives of the conflict are made legible. This legibility, I argue, produces affective forms of membership that envision youth as essential participants in the resolution of the ongoing conflict. How does the circulation of Invisible Children-produced narratives shape the political subjectivities of the American and Ugandan youth who consume them? In what ways does the organization’s attempt to place Ugandan youth and their communities within a digestible historical narrative of conflict and its aftermath produce new forms of social relations?

This paper will explore how documentation and memorialization initiatives curate historical narratives in contemporary northern Uganda. The emergence of sites of memory (Nora 1989; Carrier 2000; Winter 2010) related to the LRA conflict in northern Uganda, I argue, is indicative of a broader process of closure wherein communities are encouraged to participate in programs intent on collating the past for an imagined collective future. By studying the “historical present” (Carrier 2000, 43) I will interrogate the ways in which this process is propelled by narratives of peace that are informed by a consistent set of expectations and how those expectations play out in affected communities. This qualitative study will catalog the processes through which the archive in northern Uganda is being constructed in order to identify the ways in which civil conflicts without a formal resolution are brought to a close through means that fall outside of the direct control of both the state and the rebels, landing instead within the purview of a complex network of actors led (but not wholly dominated) by human rights and development organizations.

This paper will explore how documentation and memorialization initiatives curate historical narratives in contemporary northern Uganda. The emergence of sites of memory (Nora 1989; Carrier 2000; Winter 2010) related to the LRA conflict in northern Uganda, I argue, is indicative of a broader process of closure wherein communities are encouraged to participate in programs intent on collating the past for an imagined collective future. By studying the “historical present” (Carrier 2000, 43) I will interrogate the ways in which this process is propelled by narratives of peace that are informed by a consistent set of expectations and how those expectations play out in affected communities. This qualitative study will catalog the processes through which the archive in northern Uganda is being constructed in order to identify the ways in which civil conflicts without a formal resolution are brought to a close through means that fall outside of the direct control of both the state and the rebels, landing instead within the purview of a complex network of actors led (but not wholly dominated) by human rights and development organizations.

There is genuine consensus among anthropologists that extended fieldwork is the bedrock of ethnography, and that disclosing personal or otherwise problematic information requires sustained, prolonged interaction with an informant and the social world that surrounds him/her. Writing the lives of others, it is argued, is contingent upon an intimate relationship between the ethnographer and the informant that is cultivated over time. What happens, though, when an individual requests that their biography be made known to a complete stranger, when intimacy is no longer a prerequisite for sharing the most traumatic moments of an individual’s life? This paper will use one particular ethnographic moment that took place during my previous stay in northern Uganda to problematize the increasingly permanent space the ethnographer occupies in (post) conflict zones. What does it mean to be identified without introduction as a ‘researcher’ (rather than an aid worker, a volunteer, or even a tourist) in a post-conflict zone? How is such an identification understood as a legitimate social and occupational category? What rules, mores, and social assumptions organize the ways in which informants interact with foreign researchers in the aftermath of violent conflict? How might the proliferation of NGO-led programs aimed to document and memorialize civil conflict reaffirm an individual’s status as former combatant or internally displaced person? Researchers working in environments marked by violence must take count of the ways in which narration of the self becomes a valid – and more importantly, an anticipated – method of engagement.

(Note: This paper was submitted with the earlier title "Acholi Futures: Conflict Resolution and the Making of the Archive in Northern Uganda")

This paper uses the conflict in northern Uganda as a case study to challenge predominate understandings of conflict resolution by looking at a conflict that has never been formally resolved but is nevertheless undergoing processes of closure. More specifically, it looks at the discursive formations of conflict narratives and memorialization processes in northern Uganda, exploring the distance between narrative and experience in the propagation of ‘post-conflict’ rhetoric and the various mechanisms of closure that shape the historical record of a conflict that has no formal resolution. I am interested in the way in which these individual narratives, as diverse as they may be, are transformed through a complex web of institutions that do not necessarily conform to a simple state/non-state dichotomy. If we are witnessing a transformation of the role of the state, of the role of non-state actors, and the emergence of new sovereignties – as much of the literature suggests – then our analysis should transform accordingly. Consequently, this project will explore the often disjointed, intermittent, and overlapping sovereignties that establish the archive of the conflict and the region’s potential futures.

There is genuine consensus among that extended fieldwork is the bedrock of ethnography, and that disclosing personal or otherwise problematic information requires sustained, prolonged interaction with an informant and the social world that surrounds him/her. What happens, though, when an individual requests that their biography be made known to a complete stranger, when intimacy is no longer a prerequisite for sharing the most traumatic moments of an individual’s life? This paper will use two ethnographic moments that took place during my most recent stay in northern Uganda to problematize the increasingly permanent space that the ethnographer occupies in (post) conflict zones. What does it mean to be identified without introduction as a ‘researcher’ (rather than an aid worker, a volunteer, or even a tourist) in a post-conflict zone? How is such an identification understood as a legitimate social and occupational category? How might the act of narrating the self reaffirm an informant’s status as former combatant, war victim, or internally displaced person and impact potential futures in the region? Researchers working in violent and difficult situations must take count of the ways in which narration of the self becomes a valid – and more importantly, an anticipated – method of engagement.

There is genuine consensus among researchers employing the ethnographic method that extended fieldwork is the bedrock of methodological rigor, and that disclosing personal or otherwise problematic information requires sustained, prolonged interaction with an informant and the social world that surrounds him/her. Writing the lives of others, it is argued, is contingent upon an intimate relationship between the ethnographer and the informant that is cultivated over time. What does it mean, then, when an individual requests that their biography be made known to a complete stranger, when intimacy is no longer a prerequisite for sharing the most traumatic moments of an individual’s life? This paper will use two ethnographic moments that took place during my most recent stay in northern Uganda to problematize the increasingly permanent space that the ethnographer occupies in (post) conflict zones. What does it mean to be identified without introduction as a ‘researcher’ (rather than an aid worker, a volunteer, or even a tourist) in a post-conflict zone? How is such an identification understood as a legitimate social and occupational category? What rules, mores, and social assumptions organize the ways in which informants interact with foreign researchers in the aftermath of violent conflict? How might the act of writing biography reaffirm an informant’s status as former combatant, war victim, or internally displaced person? Writing lives has become a regular exercise in northern Uganda, particularly for those NGOs involved in documentation and memorialization. Representation is a precarious enterprise and it is vital that researchers working in violent and difficult situations take count of the ways in which narration of the self becomes a valid – and more importantly, an anticipated – method of engagement.

There is genuine consensus among anthropologists (and other researchers employing the ethnographic method) that extended fieldwork is the bedrock of ethnography, and that disclosing personal or otherwise problematic information requires sustained, prolonged interaction with an informant and the social world that surrounds him/her. Ethnographic biography, it is argued, is contingent upon an intimate relationship between the ethnographer and the informant that is cultivated over time. What happens, though, when an individual requests that their biography be made known to a complete stranger, when intimacy is no longer a prerequisite for sharing the most traumatic moments of an individual’s life? This paper will use two ethnographic moments that took place during my most recent stay in northern Uganda to problematize the increasingly permanent space that the ethnographer occupies in (post) conflict zones. What does it mean to be identified without introduction as a ‘researcher’ (rather than an aid worker, a volunteer, or even a tourist) in a post-conflict zone? How is such an identification understood as a legitimate social and occupational category? What rules, mores, and social assumptions organize the ways in which informants interact with foreign researchers in the aftermath of violent conflict? How might the act of writing biography reaffirm an informant’s status as former combatant, war victim, or internally displaced person? Researchers working in violent and difficult situations must take count of the ways in which narration of the self becomes a valid – and more importantly, an anticipated – method of engagement.

Southern Sudanese are prominent in local (within the nation-state, most often in Khartoum), regional (outside of the nation-state, often in refugee camps), and international (most frequently the in the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia) displaced communities. In what instances, then, can we consider Southern Sudanese communities diasporic? Which of these products of migration are diasporas? Which are not? How can a community of Southern Sudanese in Khartoum, Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, or a suburb of Minneapolis be differentiated as diasporas if their goals and aims remain so similar? By integrating Tololyan's (2007) desire to keep "diaspora" a closed academic term for analysis into Cohen's (1997) realization that a taxonomy on diasporas is inexact because of immense categorical overlap, we can sift through the tensions that are present in diaspora codification. This tension between a realization of overlapping, agile categories and the search for a focused, well-defined academic term is a dialectic that must be unearthed, for it is in this conversation that the lived realities of transnational communities emerge. By using Southern Sudan as a case study to challenge our understanding of diaspora formation, I argue that while the process of naming is important, perhaps the process of attempting to name is more illuminating. To place the community against the term diaspora, even if not to formally declare it as such, elucidates transnational networks of trade and cultural modes of being that challenge normative approaches to civic identity in the contemporary world.

The conversation on conflict resolution consistently focuses on either the mechanisms of resolution or on issues of justice, examining the ways in which communities move forward from conflict. Yet, there is little work done to examine the ways in which ongoing conflicts are brought to an 'end' through informal mechanisms of closure which inherently privilege certain narratives while prohibiting others. Using the conflict in northern Uganda as a case study, I challenge predominate understandings of conflict resolution by looking at a conflict that has never been formally resolved but is nevertheless undergoing processes of closure. I am primarily interested in understanding how the resettlement of IDPs and the memorialization of both the camp and the conflict at large inform state and individual understandings of the (imagined) end of the conflict in northern Uganda. By understanding the resolution of conflict as either a single event or the undefined catalyst of post-conflict justice, we disregard the ways in which resolution is communally manufactured and experienced. I argue that the cessation of conflict is better understood as the culmination of overlapping and varied instantiations of war performed by a wide array of actors.

This thesis considers how documentation and memorialization initiatives curate historical narratives in contemporary northern Uganda since the collapse of the Juba peace talks in 2008. Taking the collapse of political settlement as my starting point while staying attuned to the history of humanitarian activity in the region more broadly, I address how each of these initiatives produces knowledge about the war between the Government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army and its aftermath despite the lack of a formal resolution or cessation of hostilities. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted annually between 2009 and 2014, I argue that sites of memory do not simply recall the past, but instead produce new meanings about that past as a response to present anxieties. They challenge, sustain, or mollify already-circulating meanings in order to produce new ways of thinking about the future of a conflict that is not yet past. Taken together, sites of memory map the availability of political claims in a time of political uncertainty. The construction of the archive in northern Uganda operates within a larger discourse of peace-after-war, an expectation that after war comes a more productive, participatory future characterized by peace. Juxtaposing the lived experiences of Acholi men and women against the expectation that documenting these experiences will bring lasting peace to the region provokes new questions about the contingencies of documentary practices and the indeterminacy of their subsequent uses.