{"id":5511,"date":"2006-09-01T14:23:19","date_gmt":"2006-09-01T14:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/?p=5511"},"modified":"2016-07-28T14:26:41","modified_gmt":"2016-07-28T14:26:41","slug":"sons-of-which-soil-the-language-and-politics-of-autochthony-in-eastern-d-r-congo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/sons-of-which-soil-the-language-and-politics-of-autochthony-in-eastern-d-r-congo\/","title":{"rendered":"Sons of Which Soil? The Language and Politics of Autochthony in Eastern D.R. Congo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Stephen Jackson, <em>African Studies Review<\/em>, Volume 49, Number 2 (September 2006), pp. 95\u2013123<\/p>\n<p>Abstract:<\/p>\n<p>The recent wars in the DR Congo have led to a marked upsurge in both elite and popular discourse and violence around belonging and exclusion, expressed through the vernacular of \u201cautochthony.\u201d Dangerously flexible in its politics, nervous and paranoid in its language, unmoored from geographic or ethnocultural specificity, borrowing energy both from present conflicts and deep-seated mythologies of the past, the idea of autochthony has permitted comparatively localized instances of violence in the DRC to inscribe themselves upward into regional, and even continental logics, with dangerous implications for the future. This article analyzes how the \u201clocal\u201d\/\u201dstranger\u201d duality of autochthony\/allochthony expresses itself in the DRC through rumors, political tracts, and speeches and how it draws energy from imprecise overlaps with other powerful, preexisting identity polarities at particular scales of identity and difference: local, provincial, national, regional. Across each, autochthony operates as a loose qualifier, a binary operator: autochthony is adjectival, relational rather than absolute, policing a distinction between in and out, and yet not indicating, in itself, which in\/out distinction is intended. Thus many speak of \u201cSons of the Soil,\u201d but of\u00a0 which soil, precisely? The slipperiness between different scales of meaning permits the speaker to leave open multiple interpretations. This indefiniteness is a paradoxical source of the discourse\u2019s strength and weakness, suppleness and nervousness, its declarative mood and attendant paranoia.<\/p>\n<p>Link to <a href=\"http:\/\/journals.cambridge.org\/action\/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&amp;aid=9122153\">African Studies Review <\/a>website<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Stephen Jackson, African Studies Review, Volume 49, Number 2 (September 2006), pp. 95\u2013123 Abstract: The recent wars in the DR Congo have led to a marked upsurge in both elite and popular discourse and violence around belonging and exclusion, expressed through the vernacular of \u201cautochthony.\u201d Dangerously flexible in its politics, nervous and paranoid in [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","region-democratic-republic-of-congo","type-academic-articles","item-year-484","item-theme-discrimination","item-theme-ethnic-racial-religious"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5511"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5512,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5511\/revisions\/5512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}