Abstract:I argue that the postcolonial Senegalese soccer stadium became a space for imagining and performing the nation for separatists from the Casamance region who tied their separatist discourse to the fortunes of Casa-Sports, a soccer club based in Ziguinchor. The twin histories of Casamançais soccer and separatism demonstrate the interplay of “space” and “place” in the stadium – constructed originally for defining and controlling the Senegalese nation but commandeered by separatists for subverting it. Non-elite Casa-Sports supporters, however, contested or ignored separatist assertions that supporting Casa-Sports meant supporting separatism, and vice versa. Thus, these non-elites revealed the stadium as a “space-place” for simultaneous, multiple national imaginings.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.