Truth and testimony of a colonial trial: Postcolonial an-archē in Senegal

Ferdinand De Jong, University of East Anglia

Every 5 September pilgrims of the Sufi order of the Muridiyya flock to Saint-Louis – former capital of the AOF – to commemorate a prayer said in 1895 by the founder of their brotherhood, Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba. Suspected of stirring disobedience amongst Senegal’s colonial subjects, Bamba had been convoked to a meeting in the Governor’s Palace in Saint-Louis. During the meeting, at which he was found guilty, Bamba allegedly said a prayer. Since the 1970s, this prayer has been commemorated on an annual basis. In this paper I will explore how the members of the Muridiyya relate in different ways to the colonial archive. I will use four documents – if allowed to stretch the meaning of this term – to illustrate how the colonial archive is used to commemorate anti-resistance and enables the making of a postcolonial subjectivity. The four documents are: a building, a prayer, a poster, and a photograph. Focussing on the commemorative prayer, I will suggest that it may be understood as a testimony of faith of the Sufi pilgrims in the anti-colonial resistance put up by Bamba. Although it remains uncorroborated by written documents and might never have happened, this testimony posits that this historical event should have happened. This raises some interesting questions regarding the trial and the colonial archive that, in rather unexpected ways, both hinge on testimony as ‘evidence’. Engaging with the literature on the archive, this paper addresses questions about the production of testimony, (un)truth and the legacy of the colonial archive.

Organiser: Dr Marie Rodet

Contact email: mr28@soas.ac.uk