Memory dialogics: Scholastique Mukasonga’s literary renegotiation of Rwandan Genocide narratives

Abstract

Many scholars have recently observed how the Rwandan State, led by the Rwandan Patriotic Front, relies on public memory after the 1994 Rwandan Genocide to categorize individuals based on gender and ethnicity. But the scholarship predominately constructs individual narratives in opposition to the State narrative, either supporting or resisting it. This article approaches the political memorialization in Rwanda through literature in order to explore how individuals simultaneously support and renegotiate State narrative tropes by fictionalizing a diverse set of emotions. Through a case study of Scholastique Mukasonga’s novels and memoires, the article examines how literary form and language allow an individual writer to dialogically situate their own memories within prescriptive State and international narratives, allowing readers to simultaneously relate to a multitude of contradictory narratives through their attendant emotions. The article reveals that the degree to which a writer can nuance these narratives from above depends on the writer’s identity, their geographical location, the languages they write in, literary form, and which aspects of the State narrative they choose to critique. The study concludes that literature might be crucial to encourage deeper reconciliation in Rwanda.