Preemptive Testimony
Literature as Witness to Genocide in Rwanda
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3750307 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Montesano, Montesano Montesano (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 88 |
| Publication date | 2015-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2156-7263 • E-ISSN: 2156-695X |
| Publisher | Indiana University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.2979/africonfpeacrevi.5.1.88 |
| OpenAlex | W1125030723 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 7 |
This article examines the work of literature as testimony to tragedy in the context of the Rwandan genocide and the 1998 “Writing in Duty to Memory” project, in which ten African authors visited Rwanda with the idea of bearing witness to what happened in 1994. The article surveys varying outlooks on the value of literary testimony, particularly Patrice Nganang’s idea of preemptive writing. Nganang admonishes African authors to preempt future tragedy rather than offer testimonies to past trauma. By reading the works of two “Writing in Duty to Memory” project authors, Boris Diop’s Murambi, the Book of Bones and Veronique Tadjo’s The Shadow of Imana: Travels in the Heart of Rwanda , I argue that literature can not only restore the inhumanity of events like genocide, but also preempt future tragedy by exposing the conditions that make violence possible and imagining a way to move forward constructively
Genocide · Political science · Witness · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · History · Law · Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies
| Citations per year | 0.33 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2023 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |