Non-mourning and ecocritical ethics in Véronique Tadjo’s The Shadow of Imana

Travels in the Heart of Rwanda

Bibliographic Data

ID9003469
AuthorsFrances Hemsley (0000-0003-0421-1035, University of Leeds, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume51
Issue2
Pages226-239
Publication date2016-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Commonwealth Literature (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-9894 • E-ISSN: 1741-6442
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0021989415628029
OpenAlexW2424623212
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited11

In this article I read Véronique Tadjo’s The Shadow of Imana through its embedded account of ecotourism and the environmental space of Rwanda’s Parc National des Volcans. In the context of Rwandan genocide, I make a case for re-grounding mourning through environmental co-ordinates. Considering what I term an “agriculturalisation” of genocide, present both in the implementation of genocide in rural areas and in environmental hermeneutics for genocide, I connect the work of mourning to a de-naturalisation of received landscapes and land orthodoxies. I suggest that The Shadow of Imana presents us with a vernacular mourning ecology for post-genocide Rwanda, in which non-mourning enclaves — spaces where a human conception of mourning does not obtain — animate a mourning for everything else that remains

Archaeology · Art · Citizenship · Context (archaeology · Ecocriticism · Environmental ethics · Genocide · Literature · Naturalisation · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Shadow (psychology · Sociology · Vernacular · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Law · Philosophy · Water Governance and Infrastructure

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