Emotions in protest: unsettling the past in ex-combatants’ personal accounts in northern Mozambique

This article focuses on the mutual production of emotions and narratives about the past in the oral history accounts of ex-combatants of the liberation struggle (1964-1974) in northern Mozambique. It draws on life history research among the ageing ex-combatant community in Niassa between 2012 and 2014. It explores the emotional aspects of remembering and meaning making in historytelling, focusing especially on disappointment and anger expressed by many ex-combatants today. More specifically, the article analyses how such negative emotions are negotiated in the ex-combatants’ personal accounts and how these negotiations shape the narration of the liberation struggle. I argue that the ex-combatants’ emotional talk can be read as a bodily protest against the official historisation of their experiences.