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Contribution short abstract

This paper contends with the failure of the international community and rights-based frameworks in the face of the Sudanese genocide. It will problematise the optimistic, linear narrative of development and encourage the use of shame as a vehicle for acknowledgement and collective responsibility.

Contribution long abstract

Development has become a science within the purview of the global north. Like other western sciences, the field of development today is formulaic, leaving little room for the expression of difficult emotions. However, the ‘bad feelings’ which arise in response to the injustices and failed promises of development act as a signal that historical issues remain unresolved (Ahmed, 2005). In contrast, the pervasive sense of optimism which practitioners in the development sphere are encouraged to embody inhibits progress by denying recognition of mistakes and shortcomings, and permits the absolution of personal responsibility.

In this paper, we will argue that the acknowledgement of bad feelings needn’t result in resignation and hopelessness, but can act as a communally understood starting point from which collective responsibility and progress can spring.

“Bad feelings” allow us to recognise the failures of the media, global institutions, and our own personal responses to incidents of genocide, allowing us to analyse our own relationship to issues of race and responsibility.

In Sudan, the racial element to the public’s response, even in progressive circles, raises feelings of despair and hopelessness, begging the question of whether the global response would be different if the people who were dying weren’t black.