Conclusion: The Way Forward

Abstract

My intention of writing this book is to re-read and re-examine, not simply to reject the common understanding of identity, citizenship, and conflict in the context of two Sudans. It is an attempt to help disrupt the hegemonic nationalist discourses that frame the recent political debate on the future of both countries by exploring the formation of identities and the challenge of instituting an inclusive citizenship. My interpretation of some aspects of Sudan’s history is opposed to the dominant colonial presentation in which Sudan is defined in racialized and ethnicized terms. Much of the knowledge produced by Europe about Africa, and Sudan in particular, originally derived from the need for imperial control and exploitation. Rather than viewing the quest for knowledge and liberation as a tool for coercion and control over others, this book regards knowledge as something for which to risk one’s identity, and conceptualizes liberation as an invitation to give up on identity in the hope of understanding and perhaps even assuming more than one identity in multicultural spaces such as Sudan and South Sudan.