Reconstituting Sudan's civil war: Slavery, race and formation of identities

My dissertation, "Reconstituting Sudan's Civil War," examines how "African" and "Arab", as competing racial identities, have been created in the Sudan and interprets the role of different actors in creating these identities. The study identifies the historical processes through which the people of the Southern Sudan are marginalized and explores their resistance to these processes. The dissertation provides an alternative interpretation to the genesis of the Sudan's civil war. Contrary to the conventional premise that the present civil war is a conflict between "Arab" Muslim North and "African" Christian/"animist" South, the study demonstrates that these racial categories were historically created through political and ideological practices.;The dissertation is divided into six chapters. The first chapter deals with my understanding of theory of historical construction. The second chapter demonstrates how the process of marginalization, in particular through enslavement, began for the people of Southern Sudan. The third chapter focuses on the contribution of the Anglo-Egyptian rule to the creation of the Southern Sudanese identity. Chapter four discuses the role of the Northern Sudanese elites of the 1930s in creating the "Arab" identity. Chapter five deals with the historical development of two phases of the civil war that began in 1955, and continues today. Chapter six examines the potentials for development of a Southern Sudanese political consciousness in the wake of civil war. My dissertation critically examines the work of prominent Sudanese writers and scholars and how they used these invented identities for granted in their understanding of the conflict in the Sudan.