Becoming, experiences, and memories

• Grant number: 24/04858-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: October 01, 2024
• End date: July 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Melvina Afra Mendes de Araújo
• Grantee: Melvina Afra Mendes de Araújo
• Host Investigator: Michel Cahen
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Université de Bordeaux, Carreire/Victoire, France

Abstract

In the post-independence period, land conflicts continued to mark Kenya's political scene, contributing to the permanence or revival of the memory of the Mau Mau guerrilla (1952 - 1960), which condensed some of the main points of conflict existing in the colonial period, such as land, moral and governmental issues. Organisations such as the Kenya Land Freedom Army, Mungiki and the Mau Mau Youth Wing, or initiatives to recognise certain guerrillas as national heroes and/or which seek to insert versions of the Mau Mau guerrilla's role in the struggle for independence into Kenya's official history, have triggered the memory of the Mau Mau guerrilla, at the same time as being the result of relationships built around this memory. Starting from this framework, I intend to analyse the formation of these organisations in an attempt to describe the relationships that made them possible and the way in which the past, the present and projects for the future have been constructed and reconstructed based on certain forms of triggering the memory of the Mau Mau guerrillas. This will be done by analysing the intellectual production of the Kenyan elite formed during the guerrilla war or in the years that followed, especially those of a memorial and/or autobiographical nature, bibliographical, documentary, audiovisual, ethnographic records, etc. on initiatives to recover memories with reference to the Mau Mau guerrilla war, as well as monitoring Mau Mau forums on digital social media. In addition, fieldwork will be carried out later with associations dedicated to publicising the Mau Mau memory, such as the Nyeri Museum and the Agikuyu Peace Museum.