Revolution, counter-revolution and revisionism in post-colonial Africa : the case of Mozambique, 1975-1994

This groundbreaking study investigates defining themes in the field of social memory studies as they bear on the politics of post-Cold-War, post-apartheid Southern Africa.

Examining the government's attempts to revise postcolonial Mozambique's traumatic past with a view to negotiating the present, Alice Dinerman stresses the path-dependence of memory practices while tracing their divergent trajectories, shifting meanings and varied combinations within ruling discourse and performance.

Central themes include: the interplay between past and present; the dialectic between remembering and forgetting; the dynamics between popular and official memory discourses; and the politics of acknowledgement.

Dinerman's original analysis is essential reading for students of modern Africa; the sociology of memory; Third World politics; and post-conflict societies.