The Invention of South Sudan

In reading the literature about the history of Sudan’s civil wars, I have noticed that much of the writings tend to read it through a racialized prism produced by Orientalized discourse. This discourse focuses on the racialized categories of “African” and “Arab” as objects of analysis and drivers of history. While the dominant official narrative of Sudan’s history highlights the role of the “victorious” North, the subaltern standpoint asserts the plight of the “victimized” South. Little attention is given to how the narratives of both sides have been shaped by racial ideas and policies articulated by the people of Sudan and the Orientalized discourse of the colonial era. Although in recent years, new scholarship in the field of Sudan Studies has begun to question the validity of such an official narrative of history, very little has focused on the accuracy of the “victimized” narratives. In this study, I will critically question the literature on the “victimized” South and treat the people of South Sudan as agents of their own histories.