'Acholi manyen made us fight': Understanding the metaphor in the former Lord’s Resistance Army female fighters' battle spaces
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Date
2019
Authors
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Publisher
Gulu university
Abstract
Drawing on from literature on women‘s agency in wars and case studying the various battle
spaces occupied by the former Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) female fighters, I seek to argue that the
former LRA female fighters' role in the war was unthinkable without the non-utilitarian attitudinalpsycho
value motivation construct of Acholi manyen (New Acholi). Therefore, the repertoire of violence
participated in by the former LRA female fighters, was constructed around the Acholi manyen, making it
pervasive in the LRA war discourse and system. In a sense, I try to validate the point that the stage of the
political in the LRA rebellion was majorly the reconstruction of Acholi manyen through re-
Acholicisation. This reconfiguration and imagining, was to reconstitute the political, economic and social
landscape of Acholi. A transition from the 'outside' - the bush (a metaphor for old Acholi, Acholi B) that
was ambiguously inhabited, to the 'inside' - a restructured and re-spatialised continuum. A new
'Jerusalem' (as Acholi manyen was alternatively referred), as placeholder of the normal (Prugl, 2003).
Second, by typifying the former LRA female fighter status, I connect to the broader literature on female
fighter status (Coulter, 2008) and literature on the motivation of the female fighters.
Description
Daniel Komakech (PhD) is a senior lecturer at the Institute of Peace and Strategic
Studies, Gulu University, Uganda. His current areas of research are: political
philosophy, peace epistemology, political ecology, and urban ecology.
Keywords
LRA female fighters, Acholi manyen, Battle spaces