Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Fiction

College of the Holy Cross

Journal

Genocide

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Le Devoir De Mémoire Ou Une Identité Ravalée Dans Cicatrices D’Alain Kamal Martial, Katharine Hargrave Dec 2015

Le Devoir De Mémoire Ou Une Identité Ravalée Dans Cicatrices D’Alain Kamal Martial, Katharine Hargrave

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article examines the construction of identity in Alain Kamal Martial’s novel, Cicatrices. Conceived during a rape committed by a group of militiamen, the narrator struggles against a sense of obligation to avenge his mother’s assault, as well as a need to liberate himself from this event. However, under the onus of being a proxy witness, he realizes that he cannot forget his duty of memory because he embodies the inherited trauma of past generations. The crude and powerful immediacy of this text forces the reader to reflect upon his or her own role in the remembrance of past injustices.


Du Témoin Et De L’Humain Chez Gilbert Gatore : Le Passé Devant Soi, Jean-Pierre Karegeye Dec 2015

Du Témoin Et De L’Humain Chez Gilbert Gatore : Le Passé Devant Soi, Jean-Pierre Karegeye

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article revisits Gatore’s novel, The past ahead, in analyzing the idea of witnessing. Some critics estimate that the novel does not make a clear distinction between the perpetrator and the victim. While recognizing the danger, the article extends the debate on the notion of the human beyond the categories of “perpetrator” and “victim”. Without excusing acts of the former, the author of this article affirms that the perpetrator and the victim belong to the same humanity. While they remain extreme and inexcusable, crime against humanity and genocides are not a contingent acts, which opens a meditation on the fragility …


Le Feu Sous La Soutane, Roman Populaire? Du Génocide À Sa Transposition Fictionnelle, Josias Semyjanga Jun 2009

Le Feu Sous La Soutane, Roman Populaire? Du Génocide À Sa Transposition Fictionnelle, Josias Semyjanga

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

A reflective, first-person account, Benjamin Sehene’s Le feu sous la soutane is the story of memories of a double crime of rape and genocide by a Catholic priest, Father Stanislas. At the beginning of the killings of the Tutsi, some people take refuge in a parish in Kigali. Its priest takes under his protection a few Tutsi women, hiding them in the presbytery. But, the Holy man will rape them. He also participates alongside with the Hutu militia to the extermination of the Tutsi who came to take refuge in the parish. Later the priest took refuge in France where …


Au Seuil Du Chaos : Devoir De Mémoire, Indicible Et Piège Du Devoir Dire, Issac Bazié Jan 2004

Au Seuil Du Chaos : Devoir De Mémoire, Indicible Et Piège Du Devoir Dire, Issac Bazié

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

That literature has not entirely lost its means when faced with great human tragedies is a fact widely debated when it comes to the Holocaust. This text relies on a discussion of the unspeakable in order to reflect on the texts written about Rwanda’s genocide. Reading those texts’ thresholds reveals a tension of writing between history and fiction, “devoir de mémoire” and near resignation of speech.