PhD Thesis: The Lives, Deaths, and Afterlives of John Garang: History-Making and Politics in Sudan and South Sudan
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The Late SPLM/A Leader, Dr. John Garang de Mabioor Atem Aruai.
By Danielle Del Vicario (PhD), University of Oxford
Abstract: “This thesis is about John Garang de Mabior—leader of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) which waged a twenty-two-year war against the Sudanese government (1983-2005)—and the political use of history in Sudan and South Sudan. Many SPLM/A members were secessionists and, ultimately, the war created a path for South Sudan’s independence from Sudan in 2011. Garang, however, advocated for national reform to create a socially, economically, and politically inclusive ‘New Sudan.’ I argue that history-making was a core part of Garang’s political strategy, as he sought to challenge both the Arab-Islamic nationalism of the Sudanese state and secessionist nationalism within the SPLM/A. I demonstrate that, in his efforts to create usable pasts for himself, the SPLM/A, and the New Sudan, Garang did not just make narratives in the moment—he produced sources and archives which have deeply informed subsequent historical studies of the SPLM/A. Drawing on recent methods in biographical scholarship to consider how Garang performed different identities as he navigated Sudan’s political space, I build a new empirical account of Garang—as an intellectual, a maker of history, a social actor, and a soldier-politician—and through him of Sudan and South Sudan. I interweave my study of his transnational education, professional career as a soldier and scholar, and social relationships in different urban milieus with analysis of how he gave meaning to these facets of his life as he built political personas for himself and the nation. Finally, I show how his histories have mattered to, and been challenged or remade by, diverse actors during the liberation struggle and since. Garang died in a helicopter crash in 2005 but, through audio and video sources produced during the war, he continues to impact upon individual, community, and national political imagination in South Sudan.”
Journal article: John Garang on air: radio battles in Sudan’s second civil war (2022)
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