'Free at last'? Exploring the articulations of political and cultural change after the fall of Idi Amin (Uganda 1979)

This talk is based on the analysis of a set of artistic and intellectual production in the immediate aftermath of the fall of infamous military dictator Idi Amin, in 1979 Uganda. It seeks to offer a more sociologically ingrained approach of moments of rapid liberalization, with an examination of the daily work of cartoonists, writers and dramatists, in a context of fear, patriarchal backlash, economic deprivation and uncertainty, but also of hope, and of the flourishing of the imagination of better futures for the self and the country. By doing so, it illustrates that although some ancient struggles within the cultural and media fields do get settled at the occasion of regime change, their complexity cannot simply be labelled as straightforward 'liberalisation'. 

Short bio:

Florence Brisset-Foucault is a lecturer in Political Science at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and a researcher at the Institut des mondes africains (IMAF). She is the author of Talkative Polity. Radio, Citizenship and Domination in Uganda (Athens, Ohio: 2019) and recently co-authored Reinventing Uganda. Political Imagination and Social Change after the Fall of Idi Amin (1979-1980) (Kampala, Makerere University Press, Nairobi, Africae: 2025).