Problems with and Alternatives to Humanitarianism and Savior Narratives for Ethiopia and Rwanda

“A Puzzle Viewed From Within”: Problems with and Alternatives to Humanitarianism and Savior Narratives for Ethiopia and Rwanda by Mandy Ann Davis A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Comparative Literature) in The University of Michigan 2014 Doctoral Committee: Professor Frieda Ekotto, Chair Assistant Professor Omolade Adunbi Associate Professor Christi Merrill Associate Professor Miriam Ticktin, The New School Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to our son, Nelson, and Baby #2, who will make his or her appearance soon. You both inspire my work and make it all the more urgent. My dream is that you may carry this work forward, as well. ii Acknowledgements My sincere thanks to my committee, Omolade Adunbi, Christi Merrill, and Miriam Ticktin, and especially my chair, Frieda Ekotto, who has been with me throughout this journey. Thank you for all of your individual and collective advice and encouragement. Thanks also to the Department of Comparative Literature for allowing me the time and latitude to explore in many different directions. Thanks to the members of my cohort: Jeffrey for laughter and keeping me sane during our early years; Suphak for many discussions and encouragement that helped me stay on course; Corina for adding beauty to our lives and for the last-minute editing that strengthened the project immensely. To my family and my in-laws: thank you for your help and encouragement in getting here. To the many friends and colleagues recently who have helped me as I've sought a balance between being an academic and being a parent. And finally, my biggest thanks to my husband, Dave. His unfailing support and encouragement, his faith in me and this project, have made all the difference. I would not have gotten here without you. iii Preface This project has many origins, but its most concrete beginning is with the novels about Rwanda by Tierno Monénembo and Boubacar Boris Diop, which Frieda Ekotto introduced me to. My reading of them and fascination with them was shaped by courses I took around the same time: several dealing with human rights, another on violence in Africa, and another on citizenship. The theme of human rights clearly came up many times, but conferences, lectures, and conversations also led to thinking about the role of humanitarianism. All of these influences lingered in my mind as I read through many histories of Rwanda and accounts of the genocide. In the meantime, two conference papers gave me the space to think of each novel in relationship to depoliticization – a theme that resonated strongly when people wrote about the genocide. Based on these accounts, I looked at media coverage of the genocide and included comparisons in my conference papers. The frequent depoliticization piqued my curiosity: why was it so easy to write about Rwanda in this way? What other references did writers have in mind when they saw Rwanda without a political lens, as a place of natural or inevitable crisis? Anyone familiar with African literature and history will know that misrepresenting Africa is not new, but in my pondering, I recalled one of the moments that shaped my own childhood knowledge of Africa – the famine in Ethiopia, which, as a child, I saw mainly through the lens of the song “We Are the World.” Intrigued, I began reading histories of Ethiopia and read through the lyrics of the song, as well as “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and “Tears Are Not Enough,” and saw a similar vein of depoliticization. Though vastly different and highly political, the famine and the genocide were written about in ways that obscured their histories, insisted on the importance of humanitarianism, and often made the North the focus of the story. The unexpected similarities in the discourse convinced me that looking at both Ethiopia and Rwanda would shed light on the problems of the discourse, as well as some alternatives. In this way, I brought the project into focus by looking at how the media iv and humanitarian advertisements constructed the stories of the two countries around strikingly similar savior narratives and humanitarian discourses. Comparing each country shed light on the other – revealing further problems with the discourses, and yet also promising alternatives. This project has been challenging in three often-related ways: on the one hand, the subject matter is difficult and, though compelling, also heart-wrenching. These are stories of hundreds of thousands of lives lost and the sheer size of that loss is nearly overwhelming. This leads to my second point: that, though I feel compelled to learn about this, and then to share what I’ve learned through conversations or teaching or writing, this response often feels inadequate. And challenging humanitarianism – a movement which is saving lives now – feels audacious, at times, even as I keep in mind the bigger goal of reshaping the world such that humanitarian interventions are no longer necessary. These finally lead to my third point: that my personal challenge has always been finding and trusting my own voice in my research and writing. Setting myself this project has not made my task easier! But in teaching undergraduates and discussing my project with colleagues both inside and outside of academia, I remain convinced that these three significant challenges make the project all the more critical, in respecting those lost, challenging the status quo. v Table of Contents Dedication..................................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements............................................................................................................... iii Preface........................................................................................................................................iv List of Figures..........................................................................................................................vii Introduction: On Depoliticization, Savior Narratives, Rhetoric, and Power in Humanitarian Discourses.....................................................................................................1 Chapter One: Media and Humanitarian Ads for Ethiopia: Capitalism as Savior .................................................................................................................................................... 34 Chapter Two: Media and Humanitarian Ads for Rwanda: Distancing and Disempowering..................................................................................................................... 65 Chapter Three: Songs for Famine Relief: From Savior Narratives to “Tears Are Not Enough”............................................................................................................................ 90 Chapter Four: Novels About the Genocide: Countering Humanitarian Discourses and Imagining Alternatives......................................................................116 Conclusion: Empowering and Looking Ahead ..........................................................171 Bibliography.........................................................................................................................181 vi List of Figures Figure 1 – Advertisement for International Christian Relief, run 15 Dec 1984 ............... 56 Figure 2 – Advertisement for ComputerLand, run 28 May 1985..................................... 61 Figure 3 – Advertisement for Royal Air Force, run 27 March 1985 ................................ 63 Figure 4 - Advertisement for Oxfam, run 19 Dec 1984.................................................... 64 Figure 5 – Advertisement for CARE, run 20 May 1994................................................... 80 Figure 6 – Advertisement for CARE, run 27 July 1994 ................................................... 81 Figure 7 – Four advertisements enforcing the “emergency discourse” ............................ 82 Figure 8 – Advertisement for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, run 29 July 1994................................................................................................................... 86 Figure 9 – Cover art for “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”.............................................. 95 vii Introduction: On Depoliticization, Savior Narratives, Rhetoric, and Power in Humanitarian Discourses In writing about the Holocaust, scholar Yehuda Bauer argues, “It has often been said that if the Holocaust is totally inexplicable, utterly mysterious…then it is also outside history and therefore irrelevant to rational discourse….if the Holocaust is a onetime, inexplicable occurrence, then it is a waste of time to deal with it” (14). Against this view, he makes clear that he believes in studying and demystifying the Holocaust because “we ought to do everything in our power to make sure [the Holocaust] is a warning, not a precedent” (3). These sentiments from Bauer’s book – recommended to me by a professor in Rwanda – have stayed with me as I started my research on problems of humanitarianism in relationship to the 1984/85 famine in Ethiopia and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. In my project, I study the literature in which the media and humanitarian advertisements, songs and novels explain the famine and the genocide, how they fit into history and rational discourse, with the hope that, indeed, they do not become a precedent. From another angle, Peter Redfield and Erica Bornstein observe the great number of

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