Writing and Filming the Genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda: Dismembering and Remembering Traumatic History

by Alexandre Dauge-Roth

Overview

Writing and Filming the Genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda: Dismembering and Remembering Traumatic History is an innovative work in Francophone and African studies that examines a wide range of responses to the 1994 genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda. From survivor testimonies, to novels by African authors, to films such as Hotel Rwanda and Sometimes in April, the arts of witnessing are varied, comprehensive, and compelling. Alexandre Dauge-Roth compares the specific potential and the limits of each medium to craft unique responses to the genocide and instill in us its haunting legacy. In the wake of genocide, urgent questions arise: How do survivors both claim their shared humanity and speak the radically personal and violent experience of their past? How do authors and filmmakers make inconceivable trauma accessible to a society that will always remain foreign to their experience? How are we transformed by the genocide through these various modes of listening, viewing, and reading?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780739112298
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	04/27/2010
Series:	After the Empire: The Francophone World and Postcolonial France
Pages:	291
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Alexandre Dauge-Roth is associate professor of French at Bates College.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1 Excess of Memory? 3

2 Historical Preamble to Set the Scene 12

3 Testimony, Literature, and Film as Vectors of Memory 26

Part 1 The Testimonial Encounter 33

4 The Hospitality of Listening as Interruption 35

5 Staging the Ob-Scene 53

6 Becoming Heirs and Going on Haunted 66

Part 2 Dismembering Remembering: "Rwanda: Writing as a Duty to Remember" 87

7 We Came, We Saw ... We Listened 89

8 Belated Witnessing and Preemptive Positioning 101

9 Between Highlights and Shadows: Tadjo's Entries 114

10 Writing as Haunting Pollination: Lamko's Butterfly 128

11 Polyvocal Dismembering: Diop's Remembering of Murambi 152

Part 3 Screening Memory and (Un)Framing Forgetting: Filming Genocide in Rwanda 167

12 No Neutral Shooting 169

13 Close-up on Some Recurrent Facts and Figures 183

14 A Pedagogy Against Forgetting that Sometimes Forgets Itself 196

15 Historical and Contextual Trompe-l'œil 205

16 Ob-Scene Off-Screened: A Genocide Off-Camera 222

17 The Heir or the Return of the Off-Screened 241

Epilogue: On Turning the Page 251

18 Testimony, Memory, and Reconciliation in the Era of Gacaca 253

Bibliography 271

Filmography 285

Index 287

About the Author 291

Editorial Reviews

The importance of this study is twofold: first, to give a comprehensive account of the artistic production bearing witness of the Rwanda genocide and second, to remind us as readers of our duty to remember.

Research in African Literatures

Dauge-Roth (French, Bates College) considers the tension arising from 'personal, collective, and official processes' of remembering and the ethical questions inherent to testimonial, literary, and cinematic expression. He also questions the relevance of political and social impediments to survivors' therapeutic testimonies. In the first section, the author looks at testimonial narratives by Tutsi survivors, whose voices allow a glimpse of their traumas and those of the dead—e.g., Yolande Mukagasana's Les blessures du silence and the play Rwanda 94, to which Mukagasana contributed. Part 2 comprises discussions of Francophone texts born from project Rwanda (a writing project gathering memories of the genocide): Boubacar Boris Diop's Murambi, Véronique Tadjo's The Shadow of Imana, Koulsy Lamko's The Butterfly of the Hills. In the last section the author analyzes seven films, among them Terry George's Hotel Rwanda and Raoul Peck's Sometime in April. The book offers a wealth of both theory and testimonies....This book, with its rich bibliography, stands as an important resource on the genocide. Summing Up: Highly recommended.

Choice Reviews

Alexandre Dauge-Roth masterfully reconstructs the complex web of historical events concerning the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. He explains its history, the myths surrounding it, and the official responses (and obfuscations) from Rwanda, France, and the United States. Most importantly, Dauge-Roth brings into clear focus the way artists and witnesses have given voice to the victims and have answered the call to a 'duty to remember' in the present. Dauge-Roth's work draws on the critical writings of Derrida and Bourdieu, on Holocaust studies, and on theories of testimony, but without ever becoming a slave to abstract theory. This is critical analysis at its best.

Leah Hewitt

Alexandre Dauge-Roth is ideally suited, by background and commitment, to pursuing some of the major ethical and aesthetic questions of testimony in modernity. He combines an impeccable knowledge of his fields of inquiry with an urgency to develop a genealogy of attentiveness to testimony. Focused on the narrative strategies and conditions of utterance at issue in communicating the Rwanda genocide, his book contributes in important ways to new interdisciplinary work in critical thought on human rightssss

Mária Minich Brewer

Alexandre Dauge-Roth's monograph is the first comprehensive study of both literary and filmic representations of the genocide…. An essential point of reference for any scholar seeking to enhance his or her understanding of the genocide and its representations…. In Writing and Filming the Genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda Dauge-Roth effectively shows that these consensual narratives do not take into account the complex social, political, and historical factors that, over a number of decades, made the genocide possible. He calls, rather, for a 'self-reflective work of remembering' (p. 56), challenging accepted, harmonizing narratives of the genocide.

Bulletin of Francophone Postcolonial Studies

Dauge-Roth (French, Bates College) considers the tension arising from 'personal, collective, and official processes' of remembering and the ethical questions inherent to testimonial, literary, and cinematic expression. He also questions the relevance of political and social impediments to survivors' therapeutic testimonies. In the first section, the author looks at testimonial narratives by Tutsi survivors, whose voices allow a glimpse of their traumas and those of the dead—e.g., Yolande Mukagasana's Les blessures du silence and the play Rwanda 94, to which Mukagasana contributed. Part 2 comprises discussions of Francophone texts born from project Rwanda (a writing project gathering memories of the genocide): Boubacar Boris Diop's Murambi, Véronique Tadjo's The Shadow of Imana, Koulsy Lamko's The Butterfly of the Hills. In the last section the author analyzes seven films, among them Terry George's Hotel Rwanda and Raoul Peck's Sometime in April. The book offers a wealth of both theory and testimonies....This book, with its rich bibliography, stands as an important resource on the genocide. Summing Up: Highly recommended.

Choice

Alexandre Dauge-Roth masterfully reconstructs the complex web of historical events concerning the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. He explains its history, the myths surrounding it, and the official responses (and obfuscations) from Rwanda, France, and the United States. Most importantly, Dauge-Roth brings into clear focus the way artists and witnesses have given voice to the victims and have answered the call to a 'duty to remember' in the present. Dauge-Roth's work draws on the critical writings of Derrida and Bourdieu, on Holocaust studies, and on theories of testimony, but without ever becoming a slave to abstract theory. This is critical analysis at its best.--Leah Hewitt, Amherst College

Dauge-Roth (French, Bates College) considers the tension arising from 'personal, collective, and official processes' of remembering and the ethical questions inherent to testimonial, literary, and cinematic expression. He also questions the relevance of political and social impediments to survivors' therapeutic testimonies. In the first section, the author looks at testimonial narratives by Tutsi survivors, whose voices allow a glimpse of their traumas and those of the dead--e.g., Yolande Mukagasana's Les blessures du silence and the play Rwanda 94, to which Mukagasana contributed. Part 2 comprises discussions of Francophone texts born from project Rwanda (a writing project gathering memories of the genocide): Boubacar Boris Diop's Murambi, Véronique Tadjo's The Shadow of Imana, Koulsy Lamko's The Butterfly of the Hills. In the last section the author analyzes seven films, among them Terry George's Hotel Rwanda and Raoul Peck's Sometime in April. The book offers a wealth of both theory and testimonies....This book, with its rich bibliography, stands as an important resource on the genocide. Summing Up: Highly recommended.--CHOICE

The importance of this study is twofold: first, to give a comprehensive account of the artistic production bearing witness of the Rwanda genocide and second, to remind us as readers of our duty to remember.--Research in African Literatures

From the Publisher

The importance of this study is twofold: first, to give a comprehensive account of the artistic production bearing witness of the Rwanda genocide and second, to remind us as readers of our duty to remember.

Research In African Literatures

Alexandre Dauge-Roth's monograph is the first comprehensive study of both literary and filmic representations of the genocide…. An essential point of reference for any scholar seeking to enhance his or her understanding of the genocide and its representations…. In Writing and Filming the Genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda Dauge-Roth effectively shows that these consensual narratives do not take into account the complex social, political, and historical factors that, over a number of decades, made the genocide possible. He calls, rather, for a 'self-reflective work of remembering' (p. 56), challenging accepted, harmonizing narratives of the genocide.

Bulletin Of Francophone Postcolonial Studies

Dauge-Roth (French, Bates College) considers the tension arising from 'personal, collective, and official processes' of remembering and the ethical questions inherent to testimonial, literary, and cinematic expression. He also questions the relevance of political and social impediments to survivors' therapeutic testimonies. In the first section, the author looks at testimonial narratives by Tutsi survivors, whose voices allow a glimpse of their traumas and those of the dead—e.g., Yolande Mukagasana's Les blessures du silence and the play Rwanda 94, to which Mukagasana contributed. Part 2 comprises discussions of Francophone texts born from project Rwanda (a writing project gathering memories of the genocide): Boubacar Boris Diop's Murambi, Véronique Tadjo's The Shadow of Imana, Koulsy Lamko's The Butterfly of the Hills. In the last section the author analyzes seven films, among them Terry George's Hotel Rwanda and Raoul Peck's Sometime in April. The book offers a wealth of both theory and testimonies....This book, with its rich bibliography, stands as an important resource on the genocide. Summing Up: Highly recommended.

CHOICE

Alexandre Dauge-Roth is ideally suited, by background and commitment, to pursuing some of the major ethical and aesthetic questions of testimony in modernity. He combines an impeccable knowledge of his fields of inquiry with an urgency to develop a genealogy of attentiveness to testimony. Focused on the narrative strategies and conditions of utterance at issue in communicating the Rwanda genocide, his book contributes in important ways to new interdisciplinary work in critical thought on human rights.

Mária Minich Brewer