“Grown-Ups on White Plastic Chairs:” Soccer and Separatism in Senegal, 1969–2012

Abstract

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.