Universities and Students' Everyday Practices of Dealing with a Violent past and Present

Paper Abstract: State-based approaches of dealing with the past can range from openly addressing conflict dynamics to silencing contentious histories. However, in everyday university settings, whether the past is openly discussed or silenced will not manifest simply along these binaries. Instead, complex formations of silencing and memorializing may co-exist. We investigate these practices using the Mindanao and Casamance separatist conflicts as illustrative cases. While Higher Education policy in Mindanao allows for engaging with conflict dynamics, these are not openly addressed in Senegal. Nonetheless, our ethnographic research at universities in both regions revealed similarities in students’ agency towards dealing with the past and present of the conflicts. This is surprising, given the assumed impact of state-level policies on the ways in which historical conflict narratives can or cannot be addressed in public universities. This shows that the institutional context of a university, which creates a specific environment for young people to meet and engage with each other on an everyday basis, needs to be considered. Therefore, we argue that the everyday context created by a university structure is more helpful to understanding students’ individual and collective practices of dealing with the past than looking exclusively at Higher Education policies.