Somali Resistance against Ethiopian State Nationalism: A Discursive Inquiry
Creators: name: Ali, Juweria
Publisher: name: University of Westminster
Year: 2022

description: Since the inception of the modern Ethiopian state, the relationship between the Somali region and the central government has been defined by unequal relations underpinned by a violent legacy of imperial conquests in the process of Ethiopian state-formation in the late nineteenth century. This thesis examines the discursive construction of Somali nationalist resistance against Ethiopian state nationalism employing an interpretive and critical methodology. Combining qualitative data with historical archival sources, this thesis challenges the canon in Ethiopian studies which: 1) emphasises the normative rightness of Ethiopian state nationalism and 2.) takes for granted the resistance mounted against this variation of state nationalism.
This study adapts Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), specifically the Discourse Historical Approaches developed by Cillia, Reisigl &amp; Wodak (1999) to investigate the discursive production of Somali resistance as expressed via written and spoken discourse. I adopt this methodology first by approaching discourse as a site of struggle for domination between competing ideas on Ethiopian nationhood, history and territoriality. The thesis examines the processes through and by which dominant Ethiopian discourses are legitimated, and concurrently, how such discourses are delegitimated and discursively resisted by resistance movements in the Somali Region in Ethiopia. It considers the impact that the independence of the Somali Republic in 1960 had on igniting a sense of nationalist fervour in ‘unredeemed’ territories as articulated by the Greater Somalia ‘Somaaliweyn’ political project.
Moreover, the thesis focuses on two national events following Ethiopia’s two revolutions which gave rise to both old and new articulations of Somali nationalism triggering public debate on contested histories, territorialities and identities which are examined closely. The first event is the 1977 Ogaden/Ethio-Somalia War, and the second event is the fall of the Derg regime in 1991 marking the era of the Ethiopian people’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), and the rebellion of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF). The study adopts an integrative approach to Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) which combines an ethnosymbolist approach with the core tenants of critical discourse theory. I put into dialogue DHA’s concern with the use of past cultural resources and the analysis of discourse within its socio-political and historic specificity, with ethnosymbolism’s emphasis on past socio-symbolic resources used to imagine the nation, construct a sense of sovereignty, and legitimate present claims and future aspirations in nationalist discourses.
Theoretically, this study contributes to the body of knowledge on contested statehood and sovereignties in post-colonial Africa capturing the ways that the state is experienced and imagined in the margins of society. With an emphasis on orality and indigenous knowledge systems, this investigation forges new ways of conceptualising Somali nationhood in Ethiopia through the exploration of conflicting nationalist claims, contested political pasts, and rival frontier imaginations in nationalist discourses. Empirically, the study expands knowledge on African identities, peripheral peoples, histories and nationalisms in the Horn of Africa. It contributes to the fields of Somali Studies, Ethiopian Studies, resistance studies, as well asstudies in nationalism and social and political movements in Africa. The thesis also adds new insights to the study of post-colonial dilemmas in state-formation by introducing novel empirical datasets and conceptual readings to these fields.