Shared History yet Divergent Memories: Reconstructing the Violence of Chad's Cut-Cut Massacre


Harmata Aboubakar, University of Toronto

This is a comparative study of the 1917 “Cut-Cut Massacre” in Chad, central Africa, in which French colonial forces beheaded religious leaders as a public punishment aimed at suppressing the influence of Islam. I explore the divergent perceptions of the massacre among the Chadian diaspora in the Western world and local communities in Chad. I seek to uncover how these groups construct meanings around - and interpret the memory of - this violent historical event. Drawing upon political sociology and the literature on memory and sense-making, this research investigates how these two groups construct and interpret the meanings of colonial violence, focusing on contexts, experiences, and conceptual understandings. Collective memories and interpretations of violent historical events vary widely and are frequently subject to debate. Indeed, various memory agents may hold differing views regarding the meanings attributed to events associated with cultural trauma, punishment, and atrocities (Halbwachs 1992; Assmann 1995; Olick 1999). This case sheds light on how religious and cultural contexts offer tools and repertoires for interpreting historical violence among groups with a common history and shared religious beliefs. I apply theoretical lenses, such as sense-making theory (Weick et al. 2005), cultural trauma (Alexander 2004), and frame analysis, to archival materials in order to understand how each group perceives and makes sense of the violence surrounding the event. This comparative approach allows for an exploration of the political processes and meaning-making repertoires used in understanding the violent event and the distinct frames used among Chadians in the homeland and diaspora to make sense of violence.

This paper will be presented at the following session: