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Memory, Myth and Ethnicity: A Review of Recent Literature and Some Cases from Zaire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Thomas E. Turner
Thomas E. Turner*
Affiliation:
Wheeling Jesuit College
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Extract

Historians, facing “an interconnected crisis of content, method and audience,” have attempted to resolve this crisis by calling upon “a new inter-disciplinary approach to the study and understanding of human memory” (Thelen, 1989a:B1). I believe that such an interdisciplinary approach can shed much light on the phenomenon of ethnicity. I shall attempt to demonstrate this point by examining a number of recent works dealing with the historical identity of the English and with “tribalism” (cultural identity) in southern Africa. Then I shall attempt to apply some of the insights gained to interviews I conducted in Sankuru Sub-Region (Kasai Oriental Region, Republic of Zaire) in 1970.

According to Thelen, the crisis of content in the discipline of history arose out of the need to publish or perish. Scholars have researched and written about increasingly specialized topics. “Common questions about how people make sense of their pasts go unasked” (Thelen 1989a:B1).

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 19 , 1992 , pp. 387 - 400
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1992

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