This dissertation endeavors to articulate a theory that makes sense of the political student movements in Mali from 1968 to 1991 by drawing upon three sources: theories of postcolonialism, neocolonialism and resistance; archival information; and the oral histories of resistant students. It seeks to describe the "selective resistance" students engaged in as they opposed the government.
The dissertation contends that Malian students were resisting a neocolonization of Mali by the French with the blessing of the military regime. The military regime craftily veered the traditionally conservative Malian society towards a gradual Westernization through the introduction of materialism, the culture of easy money, the taste for luxury, widespread corruption and nepotism, a meritocratic system based on relationships rather than credentialism, and the easing of restrictions imposed on Western cultural and intellectual production (i.e., music, films, fashion, books and others). School reforms contributed their share to the gradual neocolonization of the country and to the repression of resistant students and teachers. The reforms adopted operated to: (1) restrict access to education in general, to liberal education, and to higher education through the multiplication of exams and the cutting of educational funds; (2) reorient schooling toward vocational education through the establishment of a multitude of vocational institutions and the introduction of "ruralization" at the expense of liberal arts curricula and Marxist emphasis.
The resistance that students opposed to the neocolonization of the country was found to be significantly different from the one heralded in the Western resistance literature (i.e., works by Paul Willis, McRobbie, Henry Giroux, McLaren, McLeod, Ogbu etc...). Unlike student resisters described in the Western literature, Malian student resistance bears the mark of its history; it is nationalist and cuts across ethnic, gender and racial boundaries. Furthermore, Malian student resisters do not reject schooling and the knowledge schools dispense, but instead, they choose to embrace them in a utilitarian fashion by using those aspects of the curricula that advance their cause and rejecting the elements of the curriculum that further the interests of the French imperialists and the military regime. As a result of this strategy of selecting and rejecting, this form of resistance is branded selective resistance.
