ABSTRACT
My aim is to compare two attempts in West Africa to create a common discourse allowing diverse ‘citizens’ to imagine themselves, in Anderson’s words, as a national community (Anderson 1983). Redolent of European nineteenth-century cultural histories, the re-establishment of the tyranny of tradition in the late twentieth century continues to stress continuity and sameness as the ideals for nation building and long term security (see Stolcke 1995:4). Underpinning ethnic cleansing and other barbarities, a ‘politics of belonging’ requires simple and expedient means of defining inclusion and exclusion in terms of rights to reside, to own property or simply the right to live which as often as not is defined by claims to have a unique history. Equally reminiscent of nineteenth-century European cultural histories, the task of creating a unique history in the late twentieth century has been the work of academics, intellectuals and others whose job it is to excavate the subterranean layers of the collective consciousness.
