On patience: perseverance and imposed waiting during dam-induced displacement in Northern Sudan

Abstract

To cite this article: Valerie Hänsch (2020) On patience: perseverance and imposed waiting during dam-induced displacement in Northern Sudan, Critical African Studies, 12:1, 79-92, In this paper, I explore patience as an attitude towards imposed waiting in uncertainty among peasants in rural Northern Sudan who were flooded out of their homes along the Nile during the 2003-2009 Merowe dam construction project. My aim is to examine the complex temporalities that appear in the politics of displacement. I show how such temporal alterations were related to the implementation of a large infrastructural project and to the shaping of the Manasir people's perception of time as they attempted to stay and revive life in their homeland on the shores of the emerging reservoir. Corresponding to the gendered experience of imposed inactivity and the resultant dissolution of time, patience is practised to varying degrees. Amongst the displaced communities, patience, as a temporal practice, represents a commitment both to future divine rewards and to living within the present situation. This commitment, in turn, offers hope and enables people to persevere. I argue that patience is not, as is often assumed, a quietist attitude, but a political practice directed against attacks by the state.Dans cet article, j'explore la patience en tant qu'attitude envers l'attente imposée dans l'incertitude parmi les paysans dans le Nord-Soudan rural qui ont été chassés par les inondation de leur domicile au bord du Nil pendant le projet de construction du barrage de Merowe en 2003-2009. Mon objectif est d'examiner les temporalités complexes qui apparaissent dans la politique de déplacement. Je montre que de telles altérations temporelles étaient liées à la mise en oeuvre d'un grand projet infrastructurel et à la formation de la perception du temps de la population Manasir alors qu'ils cherchaient à rester et vivre à nouveau sur leurs terres sur les rives du réservoir émergent. Correspondant à l'expérience sexuée de l'inactivité imposée et la dissolution du temps en découlant, la patience est pratiquée à différents degrés. Au sein des communautés déplacées, la patience, en tant que pratique temporelle, représente un engagement aussi bien envers des récompenses divines à venir qu'envers la vie dans la situation actuelle. Cet engagement, à son tour, apporte de l'espoir et permet à la population de persévérer. Je défends que la patience n'est pas, contrairement à ce que l'on croit souvent, une attitude quiétiste, mais une pratique politique dirigée contre des attaques par l'Etat.

Arrival or Return? Temporality and Materiality of Transit Sites in Overlapping Displacement Context in Border Cities of the Lake Chad Basin Region

“…The second fault line is exclusion/inclusion as the ends goals of confinement (Løvgren & Turner, 2019). The last one focuses on hope, which addresses the choices that people have under extreme circumstances (Hänsch, 2020).…”

“…Usman's family and many other refugee returnees and IDPs were trapped in a never-ending present, yet they found a possibility to 'move on' as a way of overcoming the conditions of exile and immobility. Thus, a prolonged waiting might suggest passivity, but everyday practices continue as people find alternative futures (Hänsch, 2020;Stasik et al, 2020).…”

“…In addition, material interventions such as camping sites and relief materials represent an institutional form of power through which future mobilities of displaced persons are negotiated and conditioned (Meeus et al, 2018). The tensions between the lived conditions and strategies to overcome future uncertainty make arrival practice temporal, spatial and relational (Hänsch, 2020).…”

“…The internally displaced person (IDP) camps in northeast Nigeria were centralized while the transit sites hosting refugee returnees and IDP returnees in border cities such as the Mubi Burnt Brick Factory (MBBF) camp were shutdown (ICRC, 2016(ICRC, , 2018. However, the hope of surviving the present and navigating an uncertain future oscillates between forced mobility and immobility, conditioned and structured by the institutional forms of power (Brun, 2015;Hänsch, 2020). Most rural parts of the LCB region remain a battlefield, where the armed groups and state military forces test firepower.…”

The Anthropologist’s Video Camera as Stage

“…Elsewhere I have described the experience of a crisis, that is, when routines and habitual knowledge lose their validity to the extent that the taken for granted and the existential experience of a familiar everyday world is fundamentally shaken. This renders the future radically uncertain (Hänsch 2020). Indeed, the term 'crisis' appears as omnipresent in today's discussions of the world and has been critically engaged by several scholars (Roitman 2014).…”