Necro-Narratives and the [De]mobilizing Legacies of Cameroon's Hidden War

• In Event: Identity and Narrative as Conflict Process

Abstract

Why is exposure to political violence associated with both mobilizing and demobilizing outcomes? The alignment between the master cleavage of the overarching conflict and local political cleavages conditions the process by which violence is translated into victimization and leveraged to mobilize co-citizens or discourage political engagement. Cleavage alignment shapes the nature of violence, reifying the driving political conflict as intracommunal or intercommunal. Subsequently, violence may produce an enduring rift concretized through intimate bloodshed or a shared victimization experience. The first discourages mobilization for fear of revitalizing local vendettas; the second generates a framework for grievances and basis for mobilization. I test this claim by exploring narrativization of Cameroon’s liberation struggle. The Union des populations du Cameroun (UPC) opposed French colonialism through political action and guerilla warfare. Many saw the UPC as a heroic nationalist movement, others as murderers. Through interviews, I examine necro-narratives, what I define as narratives that [re]construct social and political meaning out of death. These narratives are used to mobilize in places where the UPC was locally hegemonic and demobilize in politically competitive areas. Conceptually, this study contributes to understanding how conflict produces disparate legacies. Empirically, necro-narratives offer direct evidence of legacy transmission at the individual level.

Author

• Joseph Lasky, Cornell University