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Collective Memory and Selective Amnesia in a Transmutational Paradox
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 August 2021
Extract
Akin to myth, only tangentially related to the empirical truth, collective memory plays a key role in the symbolic discourse of politics, in the legitimation of political structures and action and in the justification of collective behavior.
This article is a tentative incursion into the making and workings of collective memory in the recent Nigerian elections. The crisis of memory—construction, distortion, exploitation, and suppression—is evident in the Nigerian “transmutation” process—the perpetuation in power, through civilianization, of a military regime. The term “transmutation” is used here to convey the sense of a political mutation, a process of uncertain nature or progeny, certainly a transition, but one emanating from an unlikely parentage, a brutal and militarized past.
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- Copyright © African Studies Association 1999
References
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