African Child Soldiers in Literature and Film.Representation, Discourse, Aesthetics

2000年后，非洲儿童兵在全球北方的媒体和艺术话语中以及在非洲和非洲侨民文化产品中的存在非常普遍。该项目旨在对非洲儿童兵在文学和电影中的表现进行彻底的批判性讨论。它分析了关注儿童兵象征性形象的叙事和视听文本如何超越了对这一现象的历史和社会学解释，以及它们是如何构建特定美学的。该项目探讨了这类文化产品的伦理影响和政治贡献的价值，并研究了对非洲大陆的陈规定型观念的再现，这种陈规定型观念可能通过聚焦对灾难受害者幼稚的形象和对其进行不可言喻的暴力而得以延续。根据这个项目的方法，表征不应被理解为纯粹的生殖符号，它只是反映了社会现实。相反，有人认为，表征是一种包括对现实的解释的具象形式，有助于以话语的形式构建对“非洲”、童年和战争的想象。因此，考虑到文学和电影可以促进对战争历史的理解以及对个人和集体创伤的治愈，该项目旨在评价文学和电影叙事的价值，这些叙事是人类就暴力以及国家和/或性别等基本社会概念进行谈判的空间。该项目的分析既包括国际形式的文化话语，也包括当地形式的文化话语，并将对两者进行交叉审查。在西非(尼日利亚)和中非(刚果和刚果民主共和国)开展了实地工作。作为一种最主要的方法，后殖民的福柯话语分析将被采用，而文学-社会学语境和文本细读将结合叙事学、修辞学、符号学、互文性和中间批评框架来完善研究。进行专家访谈将进一步有助于更好地对论述领域进行概念化。一方面，该项目将揭示虚构和证言表现的复杂性，同时研究文学和电影贡献所运用的特定美学。另一方面，通过无处不在的童兵形象将非洲重新描绘成残暴暴力大陆的陷阱将被揭穿。然而，由于主题的敏感性和复杂性，这两种倾向的矛盾和干扰是不可避免的。必须对这些紧张局势进行批判性评估，并将其视为论述的整体的一部分。

After 2000, the presence of African child soldiers in media and artistic discourse in the global North as well as in African and Afro-diasporic cultural productions is extremely pervasive. The project aims at a thorough critical discussion of representations of African Child soldiers in literature and film. It analyzes how narrative and audiovisual texts, which focus on the symbolic figure of the child soldier, go beyond historical and sociological explanations of the phenomenon and how they construct their specific aesthetics. The project interrogates the value of the ethical impact and the political contribution of such cultural productions as well as it examines the reproduction of stereotypes about the African continent, which may be perpetuated through the focalisation of unspeakable violence on and by the puerile figure of a disaster victim. According to the approach of this project, representation is not to be understood as a sheer reproductive sign, which simply mirrors social reality. Rather, it is argued that representation is a form of figuration that includes the interpretation of reality and that contributes to the discursive construction of imaginations of "Africa", childhood and war. Therefore, the project aims at valorising those literary and cinematographic narratives that function as a space for human negotiation of violence as well as of fundamental social concepts such as the nation and/or gender, considering that literature and film can contribute to the understanding of the history of war and to the healing of individual and collective trauma. The project's analysis comprises international as well as local forms of cultural discourse and will cross-examine both. Fieldwork has been carried out in West Africa (Nigeria) and in Central Africa (Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo). As an overarching method, postcolonial Foucauldian discourse analysis will be employed while a literary-sociological contextualisation and textual close readings with narratology, rhetoric, semiotic, intertextual and intermedial critical frameworks will refine the study. The conduction of expert interviews will further contribute to a better conceptualization of the discursive field. On the one hand, the project will unmask the complexity of fictional and testimonial representations and at the same time look at the specific aesthetics deployed by literary and cinematographic contributions. On the other hand, the pitfalls of the renewed representation of Africa as continent of atrocious violence through the ubiquitous figure of the child soldier will be debunked. Due to the sensitivity and complexity of the subject, ambivalences and interferences of both tendencies are however inevitable. These tensions must be critically evaluated and perceived as part of the discursive ensemble.