Writing and Filming the Genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda: Dismembering and Remembering Traumatic History(After the Empire: The Francophone World and Postcolonial France)

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?

Table of Contents:
INTRODUCTION 1. Excess of Memory? 2. Historical Preamble to Set the Scene 3. Testimony, Literature, and Film as Vectors of Memory PART ONE: The Testimonial Encounter 4. The Hospitality of Listening as Interruption 5. Staging the Ob-Scene 6. Becoming Heirs and Going on Haunted PART TWO: Dismembering Remembering: "Rwanda: Writing as a Duty to Remember" 7. We Came, We Saw… We Listened 8. Belated Witnessing and Preemptive Positioning 9. Between Highlights and Shadows: Tadjo's Entries 10. Writing as Haunting Pollination: Lamko's Butterfly 11. Polyvocal Dismembering: Diop's Remembering of Murambi PART THREE: Screening Memory and (Un)Framing Forgetting: Filming Genocide and its Aftermath in Rwanda 12. No Neutral Shooting 13. Close-up on some Recurrent Facts and Figures 14. A Pedagogy Against Forgetting that Sometimes Forgets Itself 15. Historical and Contextual Trompe-l'œil 16. Ob-Scene Off-Screened: A Genocide Off-Camera 17. The Heir or the Return of the Off-Screened EPILOGUE: On Turning the Page 18. Testimony, Memory, and Reconciliation in the Era of Gacaca

About the Author :
Alexandre Dauge-Roth is associate professor of French at Bates College.

Review :
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 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. 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 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. 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. 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.