L'ex-Yougoslavie et le Rwanda en récit : du témoignage des conflits aux enjeux d'un déplacement fictionnel

Our dissertation focuses on a two-part literary corpus. The first group contains four novels dedicated to the wars of the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Created either by French journalists or by exiles from the former Yugoslavia, these texts include: Jean Hatzfeld's Robert Mitchum ne revient pas (2013), Étienne de Montety's La route du salut (2013), Saša Stanišić's Le soldat et le gramophone (2008) (original title: Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert) and Dubravka Ugrešić's Le ministère de la douleur (2008) (Ministarstvo boli). For its part, the second group consists of five literary works on the massacres of the Rwandan genocide which took place in 1994. Produced by African, French or Belgian writers, these include: Tierno Monenembo's L'aîné des orphelins (2000), A. Waberi's Moisson de crânes: textes pour le Rwanda (2000), Boubacar Boris Diop's Murambi: le livre des ossements (2000), Véronique Tadjo's L'ombre d'Imana: voyages jusqu'au bout du Rwanda (2000) and Huguette de Broqueville's Uraho? Es-tu toujours vivant (1997). It seems there is no justification for linking the context of the wars in the former Yugoslavia with the events of Rwanda. Additionally, in both cases the writers who have sought to bear witness to these conflict with their pen all come from very different backgrounds. But whether knowingly or unknowingly, all of them did seize a central issue of these recent conflicts, beyond the horror of what happened: their ambivalent nature, the fact they reflect heterogeneous, uncertain and sometimes contradictory realities. While resorting to a kind of History that is closely interwoven with a porous present time, the authors have thus imagined some forms of 'exteriority' that play on these possible variations, bringing them into existence. They created literary scenes that are at odds with the events of the war or the genocide they refer to. For example, Hatzfeld raises in his book Robert Mitchum ne revient pas the issue of a sports competition taking place in the midst of the siege of Sarajevo. Through the Olympic paradigm, a supranational space arises. It conflicts with the national logic of war in Bosnia. In this way, the face of war changes. By using the tools of rhetoric and their application to fictional narrative, we propose to question the implications of these narrative shifts away from the conflicts reality, whether in its political, media, cultural or even economic relevance (as it happens with Ugrešić). If most of the writers want to fight what these violent realities involve, we shall see that the literary answers they bring have sometimes a contradictory nature. Indeed, they can revive the same logical patterns that they criticize elsewhere. Despite everything, these narratives help us better understand the place occupied by fiction in our societies, whether the authors choose to focus on utopia or demystification. Basically, it is always about changing the dispositions of an otherwise essentially fictional reality. Thus, it may be possible to escape the return of the same, a continuous collapse of which we are all witnesses.

from #MedicinebyAlexandrosSfakianakis via xlomafota13 on Inoreader http://ift.tt/2pVbnM1
via IFTTT