Beyond Darkness. Representation and Explication of Violence in Congolese Literature after 1960

基于刚果作家对刚果“黑暗之心”主题的批判性和富有成效的考察，我们的项目询问1960年后刚果文学（DRC）如何描绘暴力行为，以及叙事的解释性背景。我们的研究重点集中在暴力形式，如酷刑，强奸，残害和谋杀，即极端形式的身体暴力，刚果似乎站在几乎范式，从历史和文学，从早期殖民时代的lsamopold II到21世纪的刚果战争。为了全面阐明和相互连接的暴力文学辩论已经出现在当地和海外独立以来，我们的项目结合了浪漫研究和非洲研究的观点，并检查法语文学，但也在斯瓦希里语文本。调查的文本语料——部分仍需通过实地调查来建立——不仅包括小说，还包括金沙萨、卢本巴希、戈马和布卡武等城市当地文学作品中对暴力的抒情和戏剧描写。我们项目的初步假设是，在20世纪90年代末，刚果作家在文学作品中对暴力的描述和解释发生了变化，这在历史上与卢旺达对刚果东部省份的种族灭绝和蒙博托政权的终结相吻合。我们的分析偏离了暂时的发现，即暴力表现形式的这种变化表现为对殖民权力结构的集中审查和对暴力和反暴力的叙述的转向，以及对“黑暗之心”等殖民主题的隐喻性话语审查的兴趣减少。因此，语库将沿着三条调查线进行检查：(I)刚果文学是否与后殖民时期和社会科学的暴力理论（如法农、阿伦特、马姆达尼、姆贝贝、雷姆茨玛）有对话，如果有，如何在文本中找到这一点？（II）在叙述和协商暴力的方式中，源自刚果民主共和国的文本（主要针对当地观众，在当地上演，通常也在当地出版）与主要针对西方观众的散居文本（主要针对西方观众）之间是否存在紧张关系？如果是这样的话，从20世纪60年代到现在，这在文学史的进程中是如何表现的？（三）文学、诗歌、散文和戏剧对创伤的接受、恢复力的发展和和解的促进能做出什么贡献？本土文学和散居文学之间的相互关系是什么？这些最初在这里被启发式地使用的类别，是否可以被有意义地区分开来？

Based on Congolese authors’ critical and productive examination of the topos of the Congo as “the heart of darkness,” our project asks how acts of violence are portrayed in post-1960 Congolese literature (DRC) and in which explicative contexts the narratives are placed. The focus of our research centers on forms of violence such as torture, rape, mutilation, and murder, i.e. extreme forms of physical violence for which the Congo seems to stand almost paradigmatically, both in history and in literature, from the early colonial era under Léopold II to the Congo Wars in the 21st century. In order to comprehensively illuminate and interconnect the literary debates on violence that have arisen locally and in the diaspora since independence, our project combines perspectives from Romance studies and African studies, and examines francophone literature, but also texts in Swahili. The text corpus of the investigation—partially to still be established through field research—is comprised not only of novels, but also of lyrical and theatrical depictions of violence typical of local literary production in cities such as Kinshasa, Lubumbashi, Goma, and Bukavu. The tentative hypothesis of our project locates a change in the depiction and explication of violence in literary works by Congolese authors in the late 1990s, which historically coincides with the effects of the genocide in Rwanda on the Congolese eastern provinces and the end of Mobutu’s regime. Our analysis departs from the provisional finding that this change in the representation of violence manifests itself in a turning away from a focused examination of colonial power structures and a narrative of violence and counter-violence, as well as in a reduced interest in the metaphorical-discursive examination of colonial topoi such as “the heart of darkness.” The corpus is thus to be examined along three lines of inquiry: (I) Is Congolese literature in dialogue with postcolonial and social science theories of violence (e.g. Fanon, Arendt, Mamdani, Mbembe, Reemtsma) and if so, how can this be traced in the texts? (II) In the way violence is narrated and negotiated, is there a tension between texts that originate in the DRC, are primarily aimed at a local audience, are staged and usually also published locally, and texts from the diaspora that primarily address western audiences? If so, how is this expressed in the course of literary history, from the 1960s to the present? (III) What contribution can literature, poetry, prose, and theater make to the coming to terms with of trauma, the development of resilience, and the facilitation of reconciliation? What are the interrelationships between local literature and diaspora literature, and can these categories, which are initially used here heuristically, be meaningfully distinguished?