The socio-political experiences, including the defeat of Biafra and its agony, have continued to reinforce the search for an alternative medium to articulate agelong collective displeasure. This desire gave birth to the strategy of counter-mythology which serves as both locus and driver of transformative and obsessive recognition of one’s innate capabilities and elevating oneself to a position of grandeur. It articulates imagined and lived experiences and a reflexive understanding of rights that underpin the agenda of justice. For the Igbo who have claims to war violence, it is a tool to exploit various spaces and processes to subvert negative myths constructed around their identity, including all forms of ethnic stereotypes and profiling, but also replacing them with a heroic image of themselves. This chapter explores the transformation of postwar Biafra activism from fictional trenches to counter-mythological protest trenches. Arguing that the issues that led to the Nigeria-Nigeria-Biafra War have been merely swept aside rather than resolved, the chapter demonstrates that the war, which was said to have ended in 1970, was merely suspended. The reason seems to be that successive Nigerian governments have refused to address the circumstances leading to the war, the testament of terror that the Biafrans faced, their postwar marginalization, and why they remember and renew the war with anger and resistance.

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Activism, Counter-Mythology, and Ethnic Self-Canonization

  • Abba Abba

摘要

The socio-political experiences, including the defeat of Biafra and its agony, have continued to reinforce the search for an alternative medium to articulate agelong collective displeasure. This desire gave birth to the strategy of counter-mythology which serves as both locus and driver of transformative and obsessive recognition of one’s innate capabilities and elevating oneself to a position of grandeur. It articulates imagined and lived experiences and a reflexive understanding of rights that underpin the agenda of justice. For the Igbo who have claims to war violence, it is a tool to exploit various spaces and processes to subvert negative myths constructed around their identity, including all forms of ethnic stereotypes and profiling, but also replacing them with a heroic image of themselves. This chapter explores the transformation of postwar Biafra activism from fictional trenches to counter-mythological protest trenches. Arguing that the issues that led to the Nigeria-Nigeria-Biafra War have been merely swept aside rather than resolved, the chapter demonstrates that the war, which was said to have ended in 1970, was merely suspended. The reason seems to be that successive Nigerian governments have refused to address the circumstances leading to the war, the testament of terror that the Biafrans faced, their postwar marginalization, and why they remember and renew the war with anger and resistance.