The Biafran War: the politics of remembering, misremembering and forgetting

The Biafran War was a genocidal war that occurred between 1967 and 1970 as a result of political, economic and ethnic tensions that arose in Nigeria as well as the divide and rule strategy employed by the British which engendered this conflict.Using the ontological position and critical realist stance that memories of wars such as the Biafran war are under constant internal influence (personal memories) and external influence ( arts, literature,media) I argue that the memory of war and the (mis)remembering and forgetting of war is inherently political.Through qualitative research methods such as content analysis of research articles , I argue that there is a gap in research literature such as the absence of women’s experiences in the Biafran war which contributes to the (mis)remembering and forgetting of histories.To conceptualise the history of the genocidal war, I highlight how memories of war are also social and personal. By using visual research methods to explore the politics of trauma in art and photography, I am able to better interpret these personal and social experiences of the Biafran war . Through close analysis of interview responses, oral narratives about the Biafran war and thematic readings of literature, I can further examine the effects such gaps in research literature have on the fabric of postcolonial Nigeria. Such findings demonstrate the impact of silence in shaping the post-colonial landscape of Nigeria as well as the epistemic violence that arises as a result of this mis(remembering) and forgetting .