Beyond Dialogue. Different Literary and Artistic Strategies to Represent the Unspeakable in Three Francophone Plays: Wajdi Mouaw
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BEYOND DIALOGUE. DIFFERENT LITERARY AND ARTISTIC STRATEGIES TO REPRESENT THE UNSPEAKABLE IN THREE FRANCOPHONE PLAYS: WAJDI MOUAWAD’S INCENDIES, GROUPOV’S RWANDA 94, AND MILO RAU’S HATE RADIO _______________________________________ A Dissertation presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri-Columbia _______________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy _____________________________________________________ by ALYSSA SMITH Dr. Rangira Béa Gallimore, Dissertation Supervisor MAY 2017 © Copyright by Alyssa Smith 2017 All Rights Reserved The undersigned, appointed by the dean of the Graduate School, have examined the dissertation entitled BEYOND DIALOGUE. DIFFERENT LITERARY AND ARTISTIC STRATEGIES TO REPRESENT THE UNSPEAKABLE IN THREE FRANCOPHONE PLAYS: WAJDI MOUAWAD’S INCENDIES, GROUPOV’S RWANDA 94, AND MILO RAU’S HATE RADIO presented by Alyssa Smith, a candidate for the degree of doctor of philosophy, and hereby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. Professor Rangira Béa Gallimore Professor Suzanne Burgoyne Professor Mary Jo Muratore Professor Carol Lazzaro-Weis This work would not have been possible without my family. I will be forever grateful for their invaluable and immeasurable support and encouragement. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the members of my committee, Dr. Suzanne Burgoyne, Dr. Carol Lazzaro-Weis, and Dr. Mary Jo Muratore, for their indispensable insight, suggestions, and encouragement. I would especially like to thank my advisor, Dr. Rangira Béa Gallimore, for all of the help that she has provided throughout the dissertation process. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................ ii Chapter INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................1 1. POETIC AND SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATION OF THE DOUBLE UNSPEAKABLE OF INCESTUOUS RAPE AND WAR IN WAJDI MOUAWAD’S INCENDIES………………………………………………….44 2. GROUPOV’S RWANDA 94: TOTAL SPECTACLE, HETEROGENEOUS DRAMATURGY, AND POLITICAL DRAMA TO REPRESENT THE UNSPEAKABLE OF THE GENOCIDE AGAINST THE TUTSI………….114 3. MILO RAU’S HATE RADIO: BEYOND REPRESENTATION (SIMULACRUM), IN FAVOR OF SIMULATION THROUGH THE USE OF HYPERREALISTIC TECHNIQUES TO ADDRESS THE UNSPEAKABLE TRAUMA OF THE GENOCIDE AGAINST THE TUTSI………………….179 4. CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………….225 WORKS CITED ..............................................................................................................230 VITA……………………………………………………………………………………246 iii Introduction The Shoah. The bombing of Hiroshima. Chernobyl. The 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. These instances are just a few examples of momentous events that define the 20th century, a period marked by disastrous occurrences including war and genocide. Such collective events, as well as instances of individual trauma, may be termed “limit events”, instances that challenge the limits of comprehension and are often characterized as “unspeakable”. They contain the possibility to alter world views and have prompted the creation of works that attempt to develop their representation. However, this resultant production has not occurred without sparking debate regarding the possibility and means of the representation of such events. While some declare an acceptable depiction impossible due to the extremity and resultant potential incomprehensibility of the extreme events, still others contend that representation is not out of reach. This debate prompts the question driving this study: can artistic representation successfully represent the unspeakable? The three plays that constitute the focus of this study, Wajdi Mouawad’s Incendies, Groupov’s Rwanda 94, and Milo Rau’s Hate Radio, attempt to do so. PLOT SUMMARIES AND HISTORICAL CONTEXTUALIZATION The complex plot of Incendies develops a suspenseful investigation of the mysterious personal tragedy of the main character Nawal by a reworking of the Oedipus myth within a fictionalized historical framework. Although she falls silent under the burden of a double unspeakable of war and rape, Nawal imposes a quest upon twins Jeanne and Simon to find their brother and father, a task that leads them to discover their 1 mother’s past and the truth of their origins. Scenes from Nawal’s past in an unnamed country that resembles Lebanon overlap with scenes that feature the twins’ efforts in the present, in Canada and later in the same unnamed country. Mouawad’s use of poetic and symbolic representation within this context engenders the spectators’ gradual apprehension of the double unspeakable. In this way, spectators learn of Nawal’s forced abandonment of her son, separation from her love, and her involvement in a bloody civil war (inspired by events from the Lebanese civil war of the 1970s) that led to her imprisonment, torture, and incestuous rape that paralyzed her speech. As the play closes, all learn that Nawal’s discovery that her torturer was her son and the father of the twins prompted her mutism. The unveiling of this information finally breaks the silence and concludes the quest for truth. Rwanda 94 and Hate Radio, the other plays examined in this study, both represent the unspeakable of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. To understand the analysis of these plays, a historical overview of the genocide is necessary. Due to the fact that neither play contains a true plot, but rather a series of tableaux, it proves difficult to provide an effective summary. The historical background will permit an understanding of the ideas that are discussed, and questions that are raised, within the works to enlighten the descriptions of the plays that follow. Historical Contextualization of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi On April 6, 1994, Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down near the airport in Kigali. This instance initiated the country’s genocide. Alison Des Forges explains: 2 Within hours, military, administrative and political authorities ordered the killing of leading members of parties opposed to Hutu Power and of Tutsi. Under the guidance of Colonel Bagosora and other Hutu Power officers and officials, a new interim government was installed. It included political leaders ready to implement a ‘self-defence’ plan that included widespread killing of Tutsi civilians. (47) As Des Forges reveals, the government immediately set to undertake “ethnic cleansing” to eliminate the Tutsi and moderate Hutu. The directive was also diffused through various government-controlled forms of media such as newspaper and radio, the latter calling “on all Hutu to ‘rise up as a single man’ to defend their country in what was said to be the ‘final’ war” (Des Forges 48). In only three months, the Hutu majority killed almost 1,000,000 Tutsi. Gérard Prunier positions the staggering results of genocide within another perspective: “If we consider that probably around 800,000 people were slaughtered during that short period . the daily killing rate was at least five times that of the Nazi death camps” (261). While Western media and the Rwandan government portrayed the genocide as a sudden and unforeseen event, numerous researchers have shown that its occurrence resulted from a long period of conditioning based upon ideas established by the colonial powers. Indeed, the tension between the Hutu and Tutsi that led to the 1994 genocide has its roots in the European presence in Rwanda during the pre-colonial and colonial era. The increasing disdain originated in large part due to the European anthropologists who developed certain classifications to label Rwandans as either Tutsi, Hutu, or Twa. These three terms were in use prior to their arrival, but their meaning differed. The original distinction between Tutsi and Hutu was not conceived in terms of ethnicity, but rather as 3 an indication of “social castes, based on material wealth” (Jones 348, emphasis in original). Although the Tutsi generally raised cattle and the Hutu worked as farmers, these social classes were “fluid” (Jones 348). In stark contrast, the Europeans used these classifications as indications of ethnicity. Their categorizations, founded upon physical description and personality indicators of the groups, posited the superiority of the Tutsi (Prunier 6). The Hutu/Tutsi division was further deepened by the Europeans’ promulgation of inaccurate Rwandan history through their espousal of the Hamitic myth, the view that “depicted the Hutus as offspring of Ham, the black son of Noah, cursed by God and destined forever to serve as ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’; and, by noble contrast, the Tutsi caste, descended from the Nilotic civilization of classical Egypt” (Jones 349). This belief claimed that the perceived superiority of the Tutsi population resulted from their origination outside Rwanda, and thus branded the Tutsi as foreigners (Prunier 7). The Church’s control over the education system permitted the propagation of the Westerners’ theory through Rwandan school lessons. (Caplan 20). Gérard Prunier identifies the significance of the division of society and falsification of history upon the policies of the colonial administration and the Rwandans themselves. The views “ended by inflating the Tutsi cultural ego inordinately” and among the Hutu, it prompted “an aggressively resentful inferiority complex” (9) that, when placed alongside their minimal political