Youth, Nationalism, and the Guinean Revolution (review)

Under President Ahmed Sékou Touré, the first Republic of Guinea was a state that promised its citizens great material and political progress but delivered little more than crushing poverty and repression. Bitterness over the gap between expectation and experience, rhetoric and reality, infuses the limited historiography of this postcolonial state, leading to a body of work that is, as Jay Straker puts it, "rich in vituperative condemnation and defensiveness" (5). With his new book, Straker contributes to a more balanced view by offering a compelling portrait both of the rhetorical development of youth-centered aspects of the Guinean national culture, and of its impact upon the lives of a number of young people from Guinea's Forest Region. By demonstrating the contradictions and complexities of his subjects' responses to the roles assigned to youth in the construction of the Guinean nation, Straker adds a great deal to our knowledge of Touré-era Guinea's nationalist project—and its impact on Guinea's people.

The book's structure contributes to this achievement by contrasting two analytical approaches that dominate the study of nationalist projects in postcolonial states. One is a theoretical approach that Straker labels "literary-historical," which focuses on the state's discursive efforts and their success in forming and reshaping citizens' attachment to the nation. The second approach is ethnographic; this presents a different picture by emphasizing nationalism's failure to establish strong emotional bonds with individual citizens, especially persons on the margins of state power. The first half of Straker's study follows the construction of Guinea's youth culture: the effort to position youth as the symbolic center of the social transformation the government thought would cement its own political legitimacy with both internal and international stakeholders; the vagaries and switchbacks of educational policy as the state's efforts to reshape the system inherited from French colonial rule escalated to the imposition of a full-blown, Chinese-style Cultural Revolution beginning in 1968; and, most interestingly, the rise of "militant theater" and other cultural forms, including dance, as a way to "reshape the experiences and sensibilities of [Guinea's] youth" (80).

The second half of the book considers how these constructions affected the lives of a number of individuals from the Forest Region. This region was the focus of Conakry's iconoclastic "demystification" campaign, explored in other works by Christian Kordt Hojberg and Michael McGovern. Straker's interviews illustrate how this campaign and the state's shifting pedagogical philosophy affected the lives and careers of several forestiers, and demonstrate that the impact of nationalism was far more complex and subtle than either of the dominant theoretical approaches would predict. He also relates individuals' experiences in the creation of Guinea's militant theater. The irony in the transformation of local forestier religio-cultural practices—from being the object of forcible and often violent demystification efforts to becoming the centerpiece of highly successful ballets—offers a potent illustration of both the reach and the limitations of Guinean nationalism.

Straker succeeds brilliantly in adding nuance and detail to our knowledge of the history of Guinea's revolution. Yet it would be a mistake to conclude from his assessment of the existing historiography that the techniques and concerns of historical analysis have nothing more to contribute to our understanding of this period. Historians could usefully assess the shifts in the state's discursive and coercive approach to crafting a nation in the context of national and international political, economic, and intellectual currents and events, and evaluate the testimony of Straker's interview subjects as oral history. Meanwhile, the evidence and analysis offered in Youth, Nationalism, and the Guinean Revolution offer historians and cultural critics alike provocative points of entry into a fascinating range of stories and meanings.