How can scholars of Sudan now write about the landmass still called “Sudan”? What do we mean when we use the word? How can the name, which denotes a whole, encompass the fragments that make up its official boundaries? For the last several years, events in Sudan have been changing more rapidly than we Sudanists can analyze them or than Sudanese themselves can process them. Now, in its truncated form, delineating national identity—always problematic in the past—becomes far more complex. Considering extant cultural flows of art, language, customs, and religion, the dividing lines are, at best, dubious. A number of events are transpiring at the moment of writing this brief essay that have changed and will continue to change the future of not just one country but now two. For example, nothing is resolved in Darfur (in western Sudan), with peace talks stalled, more violence being perpetrated by the northern central government and its proxies, guerilla groups proliferating and battling among themselves, and a probable link among some Darfur groups and South Sudan forces.

A January 2011 referendum for southern Sudanese yielded, by an overwhelming landslide (over 98%), the independent state of South Sudan. The referendum left uncertain the future status of the border area of Abyei, where many of the oil fields are located; the Southern Blue Nile State and other border areas between the North and South; and the North, which may experience a relapse into the rigid and brutal Islamist military rule that it had begun to back away from. South Sudan, with its Christian and other non-Muslim populations, will no longer serve as a buffer against all-out Islamization campaigns. But how will Muslims in South Sudan fare? Long seen, incorrectly, as a small minority by the international Western media and some southern propagandists, the large Muslim population in South Sudan has increasingly been made invisible. And what will happen to the thousands of mixed religio-ethnic families living along the borders, many of whom do not identify as “northerner” or “southerner”?

In addition, a Consultation Election in South Kordofan State in west-central Sudan (containing the volatile Nuba Mountains) was supposed to occur, partially to reveal if the area's residents would choose to be part of Sudan or South Sudan. Instead, a disputed state governor election led to military actions in mid-June 2011, which amounted to war between combatants of the Sudan People's Liberation Army–North (remnants or a wing of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army, the guerilla movement that liberated South Sudan) and the northern-controlled Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), with the latter bombing the area and seizing Kadugli, the state capital. Thousands fled into the mountains and into refugee camps in various towns and cities, including the tri-capital of Khartoum. The SAF's incursion into the Nuba Mountains—bombing, maiming, and killing civilians—is already being referred to by many journalists and scholars as “genocide,” primarily because of the clear targeting of the Nuba in contrast to other groups in South Kordofan State. For some it is nearly a repeat of the genocidal processes of 2000. Given the threatening posturing of the northern government, which only begrudgingly accepted the results of the southern referendum, it is very likely that conflict will continue and genocidal assaults will be reignited.

The conflict is not all about oil. Nor is it all about war. The concept of “war” does not carry within it the racism, misogyny, religious chauvinism, and class antagonisms of the once-unified Sudan's historical and ongoing center–periphery conflicts. The non-Arab and non-Muslim people and cultures of the North, South, West, and East have been variously assaulted through direct state violence, state-supported private violence, malign neglect and attrition, and “utilitarian” projects such as the dams that culturally and economically devastated Nubia. Violations have included forced Islamization and Arabization, intentional starvation, forced displacement and relocation, indoctrination, rape and other gendered assaults, aerial bombardment, militia raids, and enslavement—an escalation of which we have seen in the 2000s in the Nuba Mountains and, more recently, in Darfur, Abyei, and Southern Blue Nile State.

Violence is a continuum; it is not always possible or indeed useful to differentiate among its various forms. Undoubtedly, the common feature among all the forms of violence we have seen in the former “unified” Sudan and continuing in the present northern Sudan and its peripheral areas is the complete dehumanization of the victims by the state and its various instruments of power and terror (such as the military, private militias, and the media). What falls by the wayside, however, by using an umbrella term such as “genocide” or its related forms, is the everyday, relentless racism, discrimination, and humiliation that marginalized people have had to tolerate. Over the years there has been a total lack of anti-racism workshops or even acknowledgement that racism has anything to do with the way southerners, for example, feel about the North, which simply perpetuates the chronic propensity toward violent animosities. Existential crises have been rampant—the lack of a sense of belonging, unstable citizenship, and constant alienation. These cannot be resolved through a decision on dividing oil revenues or by drawing “correct boundaries.” Sudan has not had its truth and reconciliation moments. Most peace-building and reconciliation activities have taken place at the institutional and non-governmental organization level and not at the individual level. Only by naming the injustices at the institutional and personal levels—by pointing them out and by insisting that some of the perpetrators acknowledge them—will the two Sudans and the peripheral areas within the remaining landmass called Sudan be able to come to terms with an inglorious past and move toward the future.

Still remaining is the question of how we academics will talk about “Sudan” now. Before secession, the country was treated within academia as marginal to “sub-Saharan” Africa and less than marginal to the Middle East. In fact, the “unified” Sudan's bifurcated identity divided Sudanist scholars. The cliché of Sudan's “splendid isolation” has often been evoked to explain why Sudan is so regularly excluded from both African and Middle Eastern scholarship and politics. More salient than isolation, however, is the ambiguity and hybridity of this large country created by colonial powers, the study of which straddles the fluid borders between African and Middle Eastern studies. Although Sudan is clearly in Africa, segments of its population self-identify as “Arab” (itself a problematic term) and are predominantly Muslim.

Whether or not scholars of the region formerly known as “northern Sudan” will now be more likely to consider the mainly Muslim North as part of the Middle East or if the non-“Arab,” non-Muslim diversity within the remaining landmass will be highlighted remains to be seen. What is at stake in these categorizations? It cannot go without notice that there is considerably more prestige in being part of the Middle East. Pervasive racism often steers studies of Sudan away from engaging with the scholarship on Africa: perhaps to some scholars the Middle East seems more robust, politically compelling, and urgent, not to mention that it is dominated by one of the Abrahamic traditions, thus making the region, for all its differences, closer to the West. However, will Middle East academics not working on Sudan be willing to accept this landmass south of Egypt? Will Sudan be more likely to be “covered” by IJMES now that its identity might seem clearer? There are many other Muslim-majority countries that are not part of the Middle East. However, Sudan's large and vociferous Arab-identified population coupled with attempts by the current Islamist government to impose even greater Arab hegemony seem an assertive call for inclusion in the Arab Middle East. Yet, one of the most politically and intellectually significant segments of the northern Sudan population is the Nubians, who may be Muslim but are definitely not Arab.

We have here a series of perspectives on identity that may plague our scholarship for some time to come. In other words, all is not settled by the secession of “African” South Sudan. It would be highly facile to think that it will now be easier to categorize Sudan. I have spent much time contemplating just what I mean now when I say “Sudan,” which has led me to wonder if any of us Sudanists have ever known what is meant by the term. Trying to pin down Sudan to a simple identity so that it will fit into regional classifications may involve a kind of essentializing or totalizing that the very complexity of the region defies. This will surely be a rich time for theoretical and epistemological exploration—a time for experimenting with where “Sudan” fits into the university curriculum, with changes in our pedagogy, and with issues in our scholarship. We can welcome the new challenge.