Social and Behavioral Sciences 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.

Bent Familia De Nouri Bouzid : Enjeux De L’Amitié, De La Clairvoyance Féminine Et Du Questionnement, Hélène Tissières

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Bent Familia by the Tunisian filmmaker Nouri Bouzid breaks down silences by questioning norms and power structures, including patriarchal authority. Centered on an exceptional friendship between three women and examining their preoccupations as well as their needs, the film reveals the empowering forces of sharing, insightfulness and engagement. Through the character of Aïda and the intertwinement of arts – in particular music and painting – the film dismantles absolutes and illusions. It encourages deep questioning in order to trace new paths, valuing the clear-sighted contributions of women in a continuously changing society.

L’Écriture Tumulaire : Témoignage Sur La Mort, Pour La Vie, Philippe Basabosa

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The article proves how the testimony narrative, in writing death and genocide-related atrocities, attempts to restore human dignity to the victims. The narrative space that becomes in that way a burial place and a funeral monument plays also the role of the ''redemption'' of history in order to secure the future. The narratives that the article analyzes constitute at the same time a hymn to life. By creating themselves other destinies, other reasons for life, the survivor and witness authors succeed in overcoming the world-weariness that threatens every survivor of the Itsembabwoko slaughter.

« La Femme Qui Pleure » : La Nouvelle D’Assia Djebar Et Le Tableau De Picasso, Farah Aïcha Gharbi

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article is a study of the dialogue that is maintained between the novel « La femme qui pleure » by Assia Djebar and the Picasso painting that bears the same title. This article also aims to show author’s achievement of the liberation of the feminine subject through an aesthetic means, in other words, through an angle that allows for an encounter between that which has been written and the painting, which combined give the women the right to the word and the image portrayed. The form and the structure that are shared between the novel and the painting appear …

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.

Historical Assessment And Archeological Survey Of 4.9 Miles Of Fm 2092 From Menard To Fivemile Crossing, Menard County, Texas, Jennifer K. Mcwilliams, Douglas K. Boyd, Celine Finney

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

This preliminary report describes historical research and an intensive archeological survey conducted for a 4.9-mile-long stretch of FM 2092 in Menard County by Prewitt and Associates, Inc. The work was performed for the Texas Department of Transportation in conjunction with a road improvement project beginning at the eastern Menard city limit and extending eastward to just beyond Fivemile Crossing. Crossing over Pleistocene and Holocene alluvial terraces of the San Saba River, the project area is located in a high-probability area for buried prehistoric sites and has a dynamic history of intensive use since Spanish colonial times. Investigations included geoarcheological mapping, …

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 …

A Historical Overview Of Poverty Among Blacks In Boston, 1950-1990, Robert C. Hayden

Trotter Review

Like most nineteenth-century residents of Boston, blacks worked hard to maintain their homes and families. Even before the Civil War, both enslaved and free blacks in "freedom's birthplace" worked long and arduous hours. Those who migrated to Boston from the South in the 1800s had come to secure higher wages, mobility, and opportunity for themselves and their families. Boston's black population grew from 2,000 in 1850 to 8,125 in 1890, and to 11,591 by 1900. In 1900, 39 percent of black Bostonians were northern-born (New England, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania), and 53 percent were southern-born.

Residential segregation for …

The Celtic Legacy Of The Gaita In Galician Music, Xosé Lois Foxo

e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies

The paper focuses on the traditional music of Galicia with special emphasis on the gaita, or bagpipe, its persistence throughout the centuries as a symbol for the region, and its strong similarities with the instruments of Celtic regions such as Scotland, Brittany and Ireland. Samples of musical melodies from Galicia are included and compared to these areas, and their similarities are discussed.

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 …

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.

Théorie Et Pratique De L’Écriture Chez Pius Ngandu Nkashama, Kasereka Kavwahirehi

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Pius Ngandu Nkashama is mostly known as a literary critic and theorist. But he is also an established novelist, poet and playwright. This essay attempts to show that both his critical work and his creative work share a common dynamic. It shows how, for Pius Ngandu, literary and aesthetic practice is not only a way of life, an existential experience from which he draws the energy to overcome despair and human mediocrity, but it is also a way of participating in the African struggle for freedom and for the conquest of a history that has been confiscated by dictators.

Le Nouvel « Engagement »? : Rachid Boudjedra Entrehistoire Et Écriture, Hafid Gafaït

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

According to Charles Bonn and other critics in the 1980’s and 1990’s, North-African literature evolved from a perspective that underlined both the centrality of style, or the writer’s aesthetic standpoint, and the importance of themes, ideas and content, to a production that was dominated by ideology, politics, factual events and testimony. To what extent can this statement be generalized? Does referentiality necessarily exclude literarity? These are questions I will explore on the basis of Rachid Boudjedra’s recent work, which is characterized by an increasingly visible fusion of writing and History. From this, I will consider if what we are witnessing …

Boudjedra, Écrivain De Langue Arabe?, Touriya Fili-Tullon

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This paper is devoted to bilingualism in R. Boudjedra’sliterary practice. Our aim is to show how French and Arabic versions of his books may be read as hypertexts of metadiscoursive value. Considered from this point of view, the differing versions neutralize any genetic approach and make the rules of an “authoritative” translation obsolete.

Meka Ou Le Lent Retour À Soi, Alexandre Lizotte

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Inspired by Ferdinand Oyono’s novel Le vieux nègre et la médaille and relying on the works of Albert Memmi and a number of critics of the negro-african novel, what we are proposing here is a reflection on the relation between the colonizer and the colonized. At the very core of our analysis is the character of Meka, Oyono’s main character, who symbolizes the people’s strive for freedom and self-rediscovery and reconquest. Step by step, we follow him through his long and difficult “walk” or journey towards himself, towards his own truth. In our understanding of that whole liberation process, we …

Topographie Idéale Pour Une Agression Caractérisée : Roman De L’Émigration, De La Ville Ou De L’Écriture?, Charles Bonn

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Published in 1975 after a wave of anti-Algerian racist attacks in France, this novel is first and foremost a statement of urban space, whose labyrinthian subway lines merge with those of writing, and participate in the drawing of spatiality. But this writing, which disconcerts the documentary expectation of the readers, betrays that expectation : instead of describing the daily life of the emigrant, it seizes his marginalization in order to represent itself, both as a victim who is sacrificed like the hero without name of the novel and as the ridiculous object of a narcissistic and ludic utterance.

De L’Écriture De L’Urgence À L’Écriture Du Renouveau, Armelle Crouzières-Ingenthron

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This critical analysis focuses on Rachid Boudjedra’s trilogy that deals with Algerian fundamentalism. Even though Boudjedra’s famous labyrinthine and vertiginous technique was at first based on the literary, on a pleasure of writing that would in turn trigger political thought – at least until the publication of the political pamphlet FIS de la haine –, his more recent technique reflects an urgency and a writing focused on political thought, both of which give birth to a literary process. Despite the author’s well-known reticence regarding conventional happy endings, he annihilates once and for all terrorism and fundamentalism, and embraces an optimistically …

La Vie À L’Endroit De Rachid Boudjedra : Entre Subjectivité Et Folie, Sonia Zlitni Fitouri

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In this study of Rachid Boudjedra’s La vie à l’endroit, I will show how the Algerian writer endeavours to put “en abyme” three types of madness (joyful, fatal, hallucinatory); these generate one another in a cause and effect relationship and distance themselves from the delirious discourse of his first novels in order to give an account of a period of terror which struck Algeria under the Muslim fundamentalist threat. We will also show how the character-narrator faces all this madness by setting up his subj bj ectivity as a shield against what he calls “external fear and inner fear”, and …

Une Révolution Boudjedrienne Des Concepts Historiques : Un Regard De L’Histoire (Fictionnelle) Sur L’Histoire, Laetitia Vincent

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Rachid Boudjedra binds ingeniously fictional and real history and, beyond historic forgery, this author succeeds in transcribing the authentic events of his country. This article exposes one of the novelist’s historic conceptions through which the reader apprehends History : detailed visions alternate and blend with globalizing visions. For this author, nothing must be abandoned or put aside; by analyzing his novelistic writing, a fictional mosaic, we will come to understand his perspective on History.

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 …