Génocide et devoir d’imaginaire
Genocide and the duty of imaginationIn July and August 1998, a group of ten writers from Sub-Saharan Africa spent two months in Rwanda recording testimonies from survivors of the 1994 genocide and gathering relevant information. This project initiated by Maïmouna Coulibaly and Nocky Djedanoum, membe...
Enregistré dans:
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| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Langue: | Français |
| Publié: |
2009
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| Accès en ligne: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Résumé: | Genocide and the duty of imaginationIn July and August 1998, a group of ten writers from Sub-Saharan Africa spent two months in Rwanda recording testimonies from survivors of the 1994 genocide and gathering relevant information. This project initiated by Maïmouna Coulibaly and Nocky Djedanoum, members of the Fest’Africa Organization based in Lille, has come to be known as “Rwanda : écrire par devoir de mémoire” (“Rwanda : Writing for the Sake of Memory”) and has resulted in the publication of two essays, one book of poetry and six novels.In this excerpt, Boubacar Boris Diop, who took part to the project, looks back on this unique literary approach to a traumatic event by situating it within its proper historical context and chronicling the whole process, from design to actual unfolding. A good deal of the article is a meditation on the merits of the initiative, but as well on its ambiguities.Based on two of his novels that deal with the issue of the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi, Diop tries to spell out the differences between a fictional text like Le Cavalier et son ombre, written “from a safe distance”, and Murambi : The Book of Bones, which took shape from contact with reality, “in the stench of death”.The author tries to find an answer to the centuries-old question : can literature be effective against evil ? Diop argues that it can, and rejects out of hand the spurious distinction between “duty of memory” and “poetic license”. According to him, the coalescence of history and imagination into works of fiction is the most effective way of ensuring that what the victims have been through will not slip away into oblivion or nothingness, thereby exposing genocide disbelievers and rendering memory immune against all revisionist misrepresentations of facts. |
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