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Youth Festivals and Museums: The Cultural Politics of Public Memory in Postcolonial Mali
- Africa Today
- Indiana University Press
- Volume 52, Number 4, Summer 2006
- pp. 55-76
- 10.1353/at.2006.0037
- Article
- Additional Information
Public memory practices are essentially political, and in postcolonial Mali, as elsewhere in Africa, the state's cultural agenda have involved a refocusing and revalorizing of the precolonial past through both performance and material culture. In postcolonial Mali, youth festivals and the National Museum are important sites for constructing a national culture. Through the use of different media, each site has marshaled a constellation of historical memories, symbolic forms, and cultural practices in the service of this nationalistic project.