History Commons^™

Maggy Corrêa : Passer Le Témoin, Avec Ou Sans Le Feu Sacré, Isabelle Favre

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In her book entitled Tutsie, etc., Rwandan Swiss author Maggy Corrêa recounts how in july 1994, she was able to rescue her mother from the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsi. This essay begins by examining the status of the testimonial genre within the literary institution. Then, based on Maggy Corrêa’s text, the analysis will demonstrate how Derrida’s concept of sacramentum can be traced in Corrêa’s adventure, and how this same notion proved to be absent from the United Nations’s discourse taking place in Geneva at the same time.

La Pensée Du Témoignage : De La Scène Du Génocide À La Scène Judiciaire, Sélom Gbanou

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This paper intends to study the stories of witnesses of the genocide of the Tutsi people in Rwanda from the angle of both History and Justice. It analyses how the actual event is brought back by the victims’s stories and shows the tormentors that the lives they have undone have been redone in defiance of the effort to wipe out all traces, the basic idea of genocide. Furthermore, the witnesses report seems to be a judiciary scene where, trying to understand what has happened, the victims put themselves in the witness box of their conscience in order to find their …

La Poétique Du Fragment Dans Le Récit De Survivance Au Rwanda, Eugène Nshimiyimana

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The narrative about surviving is by definition an impossible narrative due to the enormity and absurdity of the tragedy. It is characterized by a fragmentary aspect which is a sign of its resistance to utterance. Based on Révérien Rurangwa’s Génocidé, the following reflection proposes to read the fragment as a manifestation of a traumatic memory that language fails to carry out due to the distortion of the signifying process in which the signified seems to take priority to the signifier. The fragment, thus, can be seen as an attempt to recuperate the symbolic, attempt that is always ''unsuitable'' due to …

Le Témoignage Dans L’Oeuvre De Yolande Mukagasana, Théopiste Kabanda

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

this article analyzes the status of testimony in Mukagasana’s La mort ne veut pas de moi and N’aie pas peur de savoir, by bringing out the main narrative strategies allowing to get round the unspeakable. It demonstrates the connection of the testimony, the memory and the history of the genocide in Rwanda as event which marked the humanity in 20th century. This link is studied through the conditions and the postures of testimony, the textual marks of dentification of the addressees and the roles of the testimony.

Témoigner : Les Voies De La Connaissance, Catalina Sagarra

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The author analyzes the narrations of Survivors of the genocide of the Tutsi, in 1994. A particular attention is paid to how the witnesses express two affects : guilt and responsibility. Their life stories explore these concepts which help them to carry out a search for Truth, which is deeply linked with the sufferings the horror of the past inflicted to them to the point of being haunted by the past. The Survivors ask themselves an array of questions, not always finding a satisfying answer which could bring them some peace. They address their questioning to different agents, telling them …

Le Témoignage De L’Itsembabwoko Par La Fiction. L’Ombre D’Imana, Josias Semujanga

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Following the Tutsi genocide in 1994, many African writers went to Rwanda, in 1998, and then wrote some novels and other fictional texts about the horror they saw. This study shows how Véronique Tadjo’s L’ombre d’Imana adopts several mechanisms of Traveler’s Narratives, but poses also their limits in ethical thinking about genocide. Tadjo uses indeed the subversion of Traveler’s Narratives by adding other forms of genres like reportage and testimonies. She discusses about the limits of testimony narratives on a genocide.

Debra L. Delaet On War Crimes And Genocide, Debra L. Delaet

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Why Not Kill Them All? The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder by Daniel Chirot and Clark McCauley. Princeton University Press, 2006. 288 pp.

and

The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda by Scott Straus. Cornell University Press, 2006. 273 pp.

and

The Witnesses: War Crimes and the Promise of Justice in the Hague by Eric Stover. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. 252 pp.

Us Policy On Small Arms Transfers: A Human Rights Perspective, Susan Waltz

Human Rights & Human Welfare

From Somalia and Afghanistan to Bosnia, Haiti, Colombia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Congo, small arms and light weapons were a common feature of the human rights calamities of the 1990’s.

© Susan Waltz. All rights reserved.*

*A shorter version of this paper is published as “U.S. Small Arms Policy: Having It Both Ways,” in the Summer 2007 issue of World Policy Journal.

This paper may be freely circulated in electronic or hard copy provided it is not modified in any way, the rights of the author not infringed, and the paper is not quoted or cited without express permission …

The 1916 Easter Rising: A History Of Commemoration, Emily Litwin

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Before traveling to Ireland, I watched the film Michael Collins; aside from the single paragraph of text allocated to the 1916 Easter Rising in The Course of Irish History, the film shaped my understanding of the Irish fight for independence. As the semester progressed, this basic understanding evolved into a solid grasp of Irish history and politics. As a student of history with a specific interest in historiography, I aimed to structure my Independent Research Project (ISP) around Irish history so that I could delve deeper into my preferred field. Throughout the semester my intrigue piqued as I noticed how …

Wars Against Civilians Are Unjust Wars, Richard A. Falk

Human Rights & Human Welfare

For those of us old enough to recall the anti-war testimony of Vietnam vets during the early 1970s, reading the chilling report by Hedges and Al-Arian on the attitudes of Iraq war vets is shocking, and yet not surprising. It is shocking because of the eyewitness confirmation of cruelty and lethal brutality on a regular basis in the interactions between the coalition army of occupation and Iraqi civilian society. Sadly, it is not shocking because of the nature of the violent resistance to occupation being encountered by American forces in Iraq, giving rise to a Vietnam-style mentality of counterinsurgency in …

Law In Times Of War: The Case Of Chechnya, Federico Sperotto

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In October 1999 “the second Chechen war” broke out. In December the Russian federal army started an operation to take control of Grozny. During the confrontation between the Federal forces and the Chechen separatists, serious human rights violations occurred. Several cases concerning violations of fundamental rights, in and around the city, have been brought before the European Court of Human Rights against Russia. The lawsuits concerned in particular physical integrity issues. This study provides some insights on the jurisprudence of the European Court on Human Rights in order to ascertain the adequacy of the mechanism of protection provided by the …

What Are America’S Obligations To Iraq After An Unjust War?, Brian Stiltner

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Since the goal of a just war is to restore a political condition of peace and justice, and since allowing a just war is always a mournful concession to the reality of injustice, a country that wins a war has post-bellum obligations to advance the common good within the losing nation and among the community of nations. It has the moral duty to make up for the damage it has caused, even if it was justified in causing that damage. (Note that the idea of a "just" war is not that war is a good in itself, but that it …

Richard Matthew On Pakistan’S Drift Into Extremism: Allah, The Army, And America’S War On Terror By Hassan Abbas. London: M. E. Sharpe, 2005. 276 Pp., Richard Matthew

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and America’s War on Terror by Hassan Abbas. London: M. E. Sharpe, 2005. 276 pp.

May Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency” by Mahmood Mamdani. London Review of Books. March 8, 2007.

Politics Of Naming And Politics Of Responsibility, Rhoda Howard-Hassmann

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Mahmood Mamdani is right to complain that the American—and international—public is unaware of the political complexity of the Darfur conflict. He is also right to point out that selective or inconsistent uses of the terms “genocide,” “civil war,” and “insurgency” can mask covert, or even overt, political agendas. His comparison of Darfur to Iraq is telling. And he is right to point out that even with the best of humanitarian intentions, the presentation of a simplified version of Darfur, in which “Arabs” persecute “Africans,” can play into the “war on terror,” insofar as, in the minds of at least some …

The Return Of Moral Equivalence, J. Peter Pham

Human Rights & Human Welfare

During the latter stages of the Cold War, one school of ethical analysis, ultimately labeled as “moral equivalence” by the late Jeane Kirkpatrick, measured Western liberal democracies against utopian standards in a radical critique which redefined the political discourse, erasing distinctions between the Soviet Union and its satellites on the one hand and the United States and its allies on the other.

Missing The Point, Colin Thomas-Jensen

Human Rights & Human Welfare

“What would happen if we thought of Darfur as we do of Iraq, as a place with a history and politics—a messy politics of insurgency and counterinsurgency?” (§4). This is the most telling question posed by Professor Mahmood Mamdani in “The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency.” The implication is that the growing public demand for strong international action—military or otherwise—to halt the atrocities in Darfur is somehow unwarranted because people have failed to understand that the systematic crimes against humanity committed against civilians in Darfur (and indeed Iraq) are an inevitability of “the messy politics of insurgency and …

The Moral Vocabulary Of Violence, David L. G. Rice

Human Rights & Human Welfare

What is at stake in labeling a particular incidence of large-scale violence “genocide”? Mahmood Mamdani rightly argues that “genocide” is an insufficient description of the conflict in Darfur. I would suggest that the problematic nature of that terminology goes back to its inception after World War II. Activists have inherited the concept of “genocide” from a particular historical moment. Now, “ genocide” carries unique moral weight in the discourse of international politics. When violence against civilians has been widely accepted as a necessary outcome of the preservation of peace, activists find it necessary to imagine a worse evil than the …

Human Rights Education: The Third Leg Of Post-Conflict/Transitional Justice, David E. Guinn

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Emerging out of the same foment of war and violence that led to the recognition of international human rights, post-conflict or transitional justice represents one of the most important political developments in efforts to advance human civilization to arise during the course of the twentieth century.

© David E. Guinn. All rights reserved.

This paper may be freely circulated in electronic or hard copy provided it is not modified in any way, the rights of the author not infringed, and the paper is not quoted or cited without express permission of the author. The editors cannot guarantee a stable URL …

Totalitarianism: The Case Of Turkmenistan, Hayden Gore

Human Rights & Human Welfare

With the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, Saparmurat Niyazov, the former First Secretary of the Communist Party of Turkmenistan and self-styled “Turkmenbashi” (Father of All Turkmen), became the country’s first president, quickly fashioning Turkmenistan into one of the most repressive regimes in the world. Declared president-for-life after a dubious parliamentary election in which he selected all of the candidates, Niyazov has created a Stalinistic personality cult to glorify his image and to solidify his control over the state. His “reforms” have outlawed political dissent, marginalized ethnic and religious minorities, gutted the public health system, and enforced a campaign …

Visual And Verbal Rhetoric In Howard Chandler Christy's War-Related Posters Of Women During The World War I Era: A Feminist, Mary Ellen Gomrad

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the development of a series of posters created by Howard Chandler Christy during the World War I era. During this time, Christy was a Department of Pictorial Publicity (DPP) committee artist commissioned by the committee chair, Charles Dana Gibson. The DPP was part of the Committee on Public Information (CPI) developed by the Woodrow Wilson administration to generate the propaganda necessary to gain the support of the American people to enter World War I. The CPI was headed up by George Creel, a journalist and politician, who used advertising techniques to create the first full-scale propaganda effort …