Language Policy and Identity Conflict in Sudan

The Sudan, as it stands today, has clearly and definitely failed to form a united country. It has been involved in an internecine civil war. The war has not merely been a war of resistance against economic marginalization of the south, but one of racial or ethnic resistance to the dominant discourse in the north which lays claim to being racially and culturally superior. The violent political conflict that led to the secession of southern Sudan and the ongoing conflicts in some parts of the Sudan are legacies of the past. These legacies cannot be understood unless the tensions are placed in historical, political, and educational perspectives. This article attempts to describe Sudanese language policy and show its complexity, arbitrariness, and fluctuation. It aims to engage with issues of hegemony, language ideology, identity conflict, power asymmetries, and social inequality in language policy in the Sudan. The Arabic language has acquired dominant status while other languages have been marginalized in the process. This article also considers the historical diffusion of Arab identity and analyzes the relevance of the latter for civil conflicts and the cessation of the South. Finally, it closes with a discussion of the present day situation in Sudan and provides some critical reflections.     

Transformations of the Indo-Iranian Snake-man: Myth,Language, Ethnoarcheology,and Iranian Identity

This article sets forth a history (with literary-textual focus) of the Iranian mythological Snake-man, from the earliest Vedic and Avestan evidence, down to Ferdowsi. The continuous development of the myth in Iran is accompanied by changes in the monster's name, which show linguistic reassociations, while a constant in all of this is the figure's representation as an inimical outsider. The Vedic name of the brute's fortification, the background of which in etymology and realia will be shown to be the pre-Aryan Bactria-Margiana Archeological Complex, finds a clear but hitherto unobserved correlation in Pahlavi. This illuminates the Indo-Iranian antiquity of the myth in terms of prehistoric inter-ethnic rivalries.     

Translating the Self: Language and Identity in Iranian-American Women's Memoirs

In recent years, a number of Iranian American women have written and published memoirs of a return to Iran. One motif that these memoirs share is their concern with language as a key element of cultural identity. The article examines these memoirs as negotiations of identity through language. Relying on Joshua Fishman's anthropological definition of language and ethnicity as being, doing, and knowing, and on Taghi Modarressi's notion of “accented writing,” this article examines these writers in terms of their relationship to Persian as a key component of the self. As these memoirists narrate their journeys between Iran and the United States, they perform a translation of self across the boundaries of language. Some narrate an “accented identity” that celebrates hybridity; others acknowledge their assimilation into American society and into the English language. All attempt to reclaim Persian as an artifact, if not a medium of cultural belonging.     

Race,Gender, Science and Citizenship

This paper argues that the history of embodiment of human racial and gendered differences must be seen as part of the history of liberal citizenship and its limits. The author suggests that a science of similarity and difference can never be a reliable guide to questions of rights. The consequences of this conclusion for our understanding of science and the gendered body are addressed in the second half of the paper, in an effort to clear the way for a more adequate and inclusionary model of citizenship and rights.     

Women and Citizenship in Indonesia

Literature on citizenship canvasses three related issues: membership of a political community, the rights and obligations associated with that membership, and participation in the life of that polity. This paper investigates Indonesian women's experience of these aspects of citizenship in the twentieth century. As a plural society, Indonesia needs to accommodate gender differences within its notion of citizenship. Only women can ensure that this accommodation is worked through in an equitable manner.     

Gender,Colonialism and Citizenship in the Modern Middle East

Books reviewed in this article: Selma Botman, Engendering Citizenship in Egypt Margaret L. Meriwether and Judith E. Tucker (eds), A Social History of Women and Gender in the Modern Middle East Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon