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

文学和电影中的非洲儿童兵。再现、话语、美学

• 批准号: 273922253
• 负责人: Professorin Dr. Susanne Gehrmann
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2014-12-31 至 2019-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/273922253?language=en
• 关键词: African; Child; Soldiers; Literature; Film.Representation

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.

2000年后，非洲儿童兵出现在全球北方的媒体和艺术话语中，以及非洲和非洲流散文化作品中，这种现象极为普遍。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。它分析了以儿童兵的象征性形象为中心的叙事和视听文本如何超越对这一现象的历史和社会学解释，以及它们如何构建其特定的美学。该项目探讨了这种文化产品的伦理影响和政治贡献的价值，并审查了关于非洲大陆的刻板印象的再现，这种刻板印象可能通过将难以形容的暴力集中在一个灾难受害者身上并由这个幼稚的人物来延续。根据这个项目的方法，再现不应该被理解为纯粹的生殖标志，它只是反映了社会现实。相反，它认为再现是一种具象形式，包括对现实的解释，并有助于对“非洲”、童年和战争的想象的话语建构。因此，该项目的目的是使那些文学和电影叙事成为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，考虑到文学和电影可以促进对战争历史的理解和对个人和集体创伤的治疗。该项目的分析包括国际和当地形式的文化话语，并将对两者进行交叉检验。在西非（尼日利亚）和中非（刚果和刚果民主共和国）进行了实地调查。作为一种总体方法，后殖民傅科德话语分析将被采用，而文学社会学语境化和文本细读与叙事学，修辞学，符号学，互文和中间批判框架将完善研究。专家访谈的进行将进一步有助于更好地概念化话语领域。一方面，该项目将揭示虚构和见证表现的复杂性，同时着眼于文学和电影贡献的特定美学。另一方面，通过无处不在的儿童兵形象，将非洲重新描绘为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。这些紧张关系必须被批判性地评估，并被视为话语整体的一部分。