Sudan’s decades of struggle to transition from its colonial/condominium situation under Britain and Egypt to a nationally integrated democratic state have been rocky. The people of Sudan have endured long periods of military dictatorship punctuated by short-lived periods of hard-won democracy. Recurrent conflicts and full-blown civil war were fought over issues of regional inequalities and religious and ethnic dominations, leading to the eventual secession of South Sudan and unresolved tension between military and civilian rule. Sudan’s struggles with identities, hybridities, ambiguities—African and Arab, Muslims of different sects, non-Muslim, and Islamist, North and South, riverain and regional, ethnically and linguistically diverse—together with the tensions of political Islam, capitalist, and socialist trends, have produced inspired intellectuals, whose thought has received global attention at times, though much has remained untold. In this volume, several contributors theorize the ways in which Sudan’s intellectuals and organic intellectuals, including theorists, political leaders, artists and musicians, women’s movement leaders, and voices from marginalized groups, have contributed to political efforts and cultural direction in their on-going efforts to find a free and stable life for the diverse people and cultures of Sudan and South Sudan. Others brilliantly recapture the heroes and martyrs of this history as individuals, using story-telling and memoir. The volume deepens our knowledge of Sudan’s intellectual discourse—on cultural heritage, identity, and society—in centuries-long history, in pivoting perspectives that include marginalized groups, and in spotlighting women’s leadership in past and current struggles, extending Hale’s and Kadoda’s previous works on gender and politics and on networks of knowledge production in particular.
