Monday, November 29, 2010

Arab and African or both...or something...in Sudan

Alex de Waal is an excellent writer, and also someone whose position on things Sudanese is interesting and complex. (I'm curious to know if there's other good stuff out there: I know only of Mahmood Mamdani, whose work on Darfur and Sudan has been more polemical, or at least polemically anti-polemical.)

I am interested in how one belongs in Sudan because virtually all popular commentary on Sudan is about 'Arabs' and 'Africans.'

How do faces and races reconcile? Arab, African, Ararican, Afrab? Or nothing?

I remember coming across this peculiarly endearing outcome of anthropology in a shop that sold old maps. Facial anthropology.


Invariably, this kind of exercise reveals far greater truths than it might have intended to.


How about a pictorial guide to face and race in Sudan? As they change with time?

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