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The Decolonizing Potential of Local and Metropolitan Literature of the Rwandan Genocide

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The Decolonizing Potential of Local and Metropolitan Literature of the Rwandan Genocide University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2012-10-03 The Decolonizing Potential of Local and Metropolitan Literature of the Rwandan Genocide O'Neill, Kate O'Neill, K. (2012). The Decolonizing Potential of Local and Metropolitan Literature of the Rwandan Genocide (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/28045 http://hdl.handle.net/11023/263 doctoral thesis University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY The Decolonizing Potential of Local and Metropolitan Literature of the Rwandan Genocide by Kate O'Neill A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH CALGARY, ALBERTA September, 2012 © Kate O'Neill 2012 ii ABSTRACT Rwanda has been well-defined on the international stage. However, international understandings of the genocide do not sufficiently represent the perspectives of Rwandan citizens. The popular construction of Rwanda as a nation over the past eighteen years has used the Rwandan Genocide as a defining feature of Rwandan national identity. Governed by colonial rule from 1884-1962, Rwanda continues to be defined by neocolonial forces. In response to this problematic reality, literary representations of the genocide are beginning to provide a forum for Rwandan voices to assert authority over the cultivation of Rwandan identity for Western citizens. This dissertation considers seven diverse literary texts about the Rwandan Genocide which attempt to bridge the socio-political distance between Rwandan and Western citizens. Philip Gourevitch’s We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families and Gil Courtemanche’s A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali offer a detailed consideration of Rwandan history and culture to challenge the colonial rhetoric used to explain the genocide to Western citizens. Élisabeth Combres’ Broken Memory, Jean-Philippe Stassen’s Deogratias, and Tierno Monénembo’s The Oldest Orphan explore the lived experience of genocide and the impact of violence on individuals and communities, affectively conveying the complexity of genocidal suffering in order to escape the media binary of victims and perpetrators. Véronique Tadjo’s The Shadow of Imana and Sonja Linden’s play I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to Me by a Young Lady from Rwanda demonstrate the significant post-genocide recovery achieved within Rwanda, and consider the value of cross-cultural interaction in further affirming this recovery. iii This study draws on the insights of postcolonial theory, trauma theory, and scholarship in the area of national identity to parse the role of these texts in recovering a productive sense of Rwandan identity for Western readers. This dissertation argues that these texts provide Western citizens with an understanding of national Rwandan identity that allows critical recognition of the superstructure of Western neocolonialism. As such, these narratives have the potential to enable Western citizens to recognize and challenge the role of the superstructure in shaping public discourse about the Rwandan Genocide. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Table of Contents iv Chapter One Literature as a Response to Genocide 1 Chapter Two Tracing the Rwandan Genocide as an International Event 25 Chapter Three Contextualizing Rwandan History and Culture through Literature 69 Chapter Four Exploring Rwandan Identity and Experiences of Genocide through Literature 122 Chapter Five Affirming Recovery and Demonstrating Cross-Cultural Activism through 199 Literature Chapter Six Decolonizing the Western Mind through Western Literary Engagement 262 Chapter Seven Conclusion 304 Bibliography 311 Appendix A: Chronology of Events 326 Appendix B: Map of Rwanda 333 1 Chapter One: Literature as a Response to Genocide Crimes against humanity require new means of redress, a mechanism that records hidden histories of atrocity, didactically promotes collective memory, and gives victims a place of respect, dignity, and agency in the process. Catherine Cole, “Performance, Transitional Justice, and the Law: South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” 171. The writer of fiction can be and must be the pathfinder. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Decolonizing the Mind, 85. As one aspect of the public discourse concerning genocide, literature demonstrates a great deal about the perceived social and political importance of violent conflict. The public discourse on the Rwandan Genocide, in which almost one million people were killed between April and July 1994, demonstrates this observation. Literature is a powerful social tool because it instigates consideration of another’s lived experience among a broad potential readership. Literary expression allows personal resistance to be shared within a community, enabling collective action. As bell hooks states, “speaking is not solely an expression of creative power; it is an act of resistance, a political gesture that challenges politics of domination that would render us nameless and voiceless…[it] can be healing, can protect us from dehumanization and despair” (8). Writing has addressed a range of human injustices; representing lived experiences of inequality has helped to establish new limits to private and public behaviours. Literary depictions of gender and racial oppression throughout the twentieth-century have channelled individual dissatisfaction with the social order into powerful socio-political movements. Literature similarly undercuts the efficacy of large-scale systems of oppression, such as European colonization, by allowing local victims to enunciate their rejection of authoritarian rule and reclaim their cultural and political identities. Even during the 2011 Arab Spring, it was the written word which empowered individuals to collectively initiate social change in the face of 2 authoritarian regimes. Western and Rwandan writings about the Rwandan Genocide and the post-genocide era evoke the horror of genocide, but many authors have recognized the decolonizing potential of such writing. Tracing the state of the nation through its history, its citizens, and its post-genocide recovery, these texts lay the groundwork for a strong Western understanding of emergent Rwandan national identity. Rejecting imposed identity constructions and drawing attention to the external political structures of neocolonial control, this discourse functions as a fragile but potentially powerful rewriting of Rwandan identity which has the potential to instigate important socio-political change. As a literature of resistance, genocide literature at large explores a subject that is as personal as it is political. The Rwandan Genocide writings examined in this dissertation identify genocide as a localized event, targeting a specific group of people and permitted by the particular socio-political realities of a given community or nation. However, genocide is also an international concern. Genocidal violence rejects the concept of human rights and invokes hierarchies to re-imagine a new social order. Because genocide destroys lives and undercuts the rhetoric of equality at the very root of modern international interactions, this crime demands responses from the international community. These responses demonstrate the socio-political factors which inform specific international relationships and interactions. Media responses tend to focus on the statements and actions of those perpetrating violence, as well as the demonstrable victims of violence. Political and militaristic responses can be both rhetorical and active; when the content of these messages diverge, they demonstrate the intersection of ideological and practiced international politics. While these responses are at times productive, neither emphasizes the lived experience of genocide in a way that is comprehensible and comprehensive. However, by merging the personal and the political, genocide literature explores the impact of 3 mass-violence on the individual victim and the distanced observer, permitting an informed engagement with the politics of genocide in the modern era. The Western response to the Rwandan genocide demonstrates the influence of colonial and neocolonial ideology on Rwanda’s identity within the international community. The underwhelming Western engagement in Rwanda’s genocide and post-genocide recovery suggests a continued neocolonial dismissal of Rwandan national identity within the Western community of nations. By framing the genocide in colonial terms and explaining the mass killings as indicative of innate African chaos, media and political responses demonstrate that Rwanda continues to be defined by the limiting racial hierarchy which enabled the colonial encounter. This neocolonialism has been a serious impediment to Rwanda’s recovery from colonialism, as well as from the genocide of 1994. While Rwanda has instituted internal recovery measures, Rwanda’s recovery must also address the external prejudices which allowed the genocide to occur without significant Western response. It is here that the literature of
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