Narratives of Trauma in Sub-Saharan Francophone African Literature and Film
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University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2015 Approaching the Witness: Narratives of Trauma in Sub-Saharan Francophone African Literature and Film George Stevens Macleod University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the African Languages and Societies Commons, African Studies Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Macleod, George Stevens, "Approaching the Witness: Narratives of Trauma in Sub-Saharan Francophone African Literature and Film" (2015). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1867. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1867 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1867 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Approaching the Witness: Narratives of Trauma in Sub-Saharan Francophone African Literature and Film Abstract Cathy Caruth and Shoshana Felman’s pioneering work in trauma theory provided innovative critical frameworks for reading textual and filmic esponsesr to mass violence. Yet trauma theory is rarely applied to African cultural production, despite the recent explosion of novels, memoir, and film from Sub-Saharan Francophone Africa grappling with civil war and genocide. In close analyses of child soldier novels, Rwandan genocide survivor memoirs, and Francophone African films, this dissertation effects such a theoretical rapprochement while simultaneously probing the limits of trauma theory’s assumptions concerning speech, temporality, and political representation. The first chapter, entitled “Giving Voice to the Icon: The Child Witness to Violence in Francophone African Fiction,” rereads Ivorian author Ahmadou Kourouma’s child soldier novel Allah n’est pas obligé (2000) arguing that Kourouma creates a “language of trauma,” which reveals how discourses of collective suffering risk limiting our understanding of violence’s psychological impact on individuals. The second chapter, “Listening to the Limit: Reading Paratext in Francophone African Trauma Memoirs,” redeploys Gérard Genette’s formulation of the “paratext” to read Rwandan Tutsi survivor Esther Mujawayo’s memoir SurVivantes (2011). I argue that the multiple introductions to SurVivantes function as a form of hospitality, inviting the reader to become a part of a virtual community of supportive listeners. The third chapter, “Hierarchies of Witnessing: Pan- African Celebrity and the Marginalization of Survivor Testimony,” investigates why Tutsi survivor memoirs have received so little attention from scholars. Using Rwandan survivor Vénuste Kayimahe’s 2001 memoir France-Rwanda: Les coulisses du génocide (2001) as a case study, I argue that the marginalization of Rwandan survivor testimonies bears troubling similarities to survivor’s difficulties being heard in the real world. The fourth chapter, “African Trauma On (and Off) Screen: Temporality and Violence in Francophone African Cinema,” argues that in leaving graphic scenes of subjective violence off-screen, African filmmakers actively bear witness to the insidious long-term effects of events such as the Rwandan genocide or the daily reality of occupation under radical jihadist groups in Northern Mali as seen Abderrahmane Sissako’s 2014 film Timbuktu. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Romance Languages First Advisor Lydie Moudileno Keywords African, Film, Francophone, Literature, Trauma, Witnessing Subject Categories African Languages and Societies | African Studies | English Language and Literature This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1867 APPROACHING THE WITNESS: NARRATIVES OF TRAUMA IN SUB-SAHARAN FRANCOPHONE AFRICAN LITERATURE AND FILM George S. MacLeod A DISSERTATION in French for the Graduate Group in Romance Languages Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 Supervisor of Dissertation _____________________________ Lydie Moudileno Professor of French and Francophone Studies Graduate Group Chairperson ______________________________ Andrea Goulet, Associate Professor of Romance Languages Dissertation Committee Gerald Prince, Professor of Romance Languages Tsitsi Jaji, Associate Professor of English APPROACHING THE WITNESS: NARRATIVES OF TRAUMA IN SUB-SAHARAN FRANCOPHONE AFRICAN LITERATURE AND FILM COPYRIGHT 2016 George Stevens MacLeod This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ To Clara, for her love and support iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the help and support of a great number of people. Special thanks to my dissertation supervisor Lydie Moudileno for her sterling mentorship, and to my committee members, Gerald Prince, and Tsitsi Jaji, for their suggestions and constructive criticism. My personal and intellectual life at Penn was enriched by conversations and feedback from Scott Francis, Lucas Hollister, Caroline Grubbs, Anne Bornschein, Charlotte Ritzmann, Samuel Martin, Lucy Swanson, Alison Howard, Phil Gross, Lisa Bromberg, Adam Cutchin, Saïd Gahia, and Romain Delaville. Thank you to my parents, Norman MacLeod and Elizabeth Stevens, for passing on their intellectual curiosity and love of literature. Finally, special thanks to my fiancée, Clara Wagner. I could not have done this without you. iv ABSTRACT APPROACHING THE WITNESS: NARRATIVES OF TRAUMA IN FRANCOPHONE AFRICAN LITERATURE AND FILM George S. MacLeod Lydie Moudileno Cathy Caruth and Shoshana Felman’s pioneering work in trauma theory provided innovative critical frameworks for reading textual and filmic responses to mass violence. Yet trauma theory is rarely applied to African cultural production, despite the recent explosion of novels, memoir, and film from Sub-Saharan Francophone Africa grappling with civil war and genocide. In close analyses of child soldier novels, Rwandan genocide survivor memoirs, and Francophone African films, this dissertation effects such a theoretical rapprochement while simultaneously probing the limits of trauma theory’s assumptions concerning speech, temporality, and political representation. The first chapter, entitled “Giving Voice to the Icon: The Child Witness to Violence in Francophone African Fiction,” rereads Ivorian author Ahmadou Kourouma’s child soldier novel Allah n’est pas obligé (2000) arguing that Kourouma creates a “language of trauma,” which reveals how discourses of collective suffering risk limiting our understanding of violence’s psychological impact on individuals. The second chapter, “Listening to the Limit: Reading Paratext in Francophone African Trauma Memoirs,” redeploys Gérard Genette’s formulation of the “paratext” to read Rwandan Tutsi survivor Esther Mujawayo’s memoir SurVivantes (2011). I argue that the multiple introductions to SurVivantes function as a form of hospitality, inviting the reader to become a part of a virtual community of supportive listeners. The third chapter, “Hierarchies of Witnessing: Pan-African Celebrity and the Marginalization of Survivor Testimony,” investigates why Tutsi survivor memoirs have received so little attention from scholars. Using Rwandan survivor Vénuste Kayimahe’s 2001 memoir France-Rwanda: Les coulisses du génocide (2001) as a case study, I argue that the marginalization of Rwandan survivor testimonies bears troubling similarities to survivor’s difficulties being heard in the real world. The fourth chapter, “African Trauma On (and Off) Screen: Temporality and Violence in Francophone African Cinema,” argues that in leaving graphic scenes of subjective violence off-screen, African filmmakers actively bear witness to the insidious long- term effects of events such as the Rwandan genocide or the daily reality of occupation under radical jihadist groups in Northern Mali, as seen Abderrahmane Sissako’s 2014 film Timbuktu. v George MacLeod Ph.D. Dissertation Department of French and Francophone Studies University of Pennsylvania April 26, 2016 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT………………………………………………………………………...iv ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………………...v INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………..vii CHAPTER 1 GIVING VOICE TO THE ICON: THE CHILD WITNESS TO VIOLENCE IN FRANCOPHONE AFRICAN FICTION………………………………………………………….1 CHAPTER 2 LISTENING TO THE LIMIT: READING PARATEXT IN FRANCOPHONE AFRICAN TRAUMA MEMOIRS…………………………………………………………………………….73 CHAPTER 3 HIEARCHIES OF WITNESSING: PAN-AFRICAN CELEBRITY AND THE MARGINALIZATION OF SURVIVOR TESTIMONY IN “RWANDA: ÉCRIRE PAR DEVOIR DE MÉMOIRE”…………………………………………………………………………………130 CHAPTER 4 AFRICAN TRAUMA ON (AND OFF) SCREEN: TEMPORALITY AND VIOLENCE IN FRANCOPHONE AFRICAN CINEMA………………………………………………………..170 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………….226 WORKS CITED…………………………………………………………………………………229 vi INTRODUCTION While the colonial-era literature of Sub-Saharan Francophone Africa frequently focused on questions of hybridized identity and nationality, post-independence literature has been preoccupied to a large extent with questions of violence. As Jacques Chevrier writes in Littératures d’Afrique Noire de Langue Française, “A la passion de la négritude succède le temps de la désillusion, donnant naissance à une nouvelle littérature… [qui] cèdent progressivement la place