Identités communautaires et construction de l’État-nation au Tchad: analyse à partir de l’expérience des peuples du Logone occidental (1960-2021)

Abstract

The present work entitled “Community Identities and the Construction of the Nation-state in Chad: Analysis Based on the Experience of the Peoples of the Western Logone (1960- 2021)” aims to describe and analyze the context of the phenomenon of the construction of the nation-state through community identities for several decades in Chad, and more specifically in the Western Logone region. Our survey focuses on the relationships, issues, and character of the cultural relationships that bring together the different communities in the region from the 1960s to the present. The objective of our study is to identify and list the means used by these populations to transcend the problems arising from division and instrumentalization. Whereas, in concrete terms, the purpose is to show that, based on cultural elements, the Western Logone region can form an indisputable common identity community, having the same people with a more or less common historical past. To achieve this, this work relied on a plurality of sources, including written, oral, iconographic and sound sources. The methodological approach adopted here is multidisciplinary. To this end, it integrates the analytical, explanatory, diachronic, and synchronic approaches. It is based on this methodological approach, from a lived experience that we observed, interviewed, investigated, and collected a set of data. It is this analyzed data that allowed us to arrive at the results according to which the cultural and ethnic diversity of the Western Logone region constitutes a lever for living together between the Christian, Muslim, and other communities for the construction of the nation-state and the emergence of a united Chad, from North to South, from East to West.