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

基于刚果作家对刚果作为“黑暗之心”的主题的批判性和富有成效的审查，我们的项目询问了1960年后刚果文学（刚果民主共和国）中暴力行为是如何描绘的，以及叙事被置于何种解释性背景中。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，刚果似乎站在几乎典范，无论是在历史上还是在文学上，从利奥波德二世的早期殖民时代到世纪的刚果战争。为了全面阐明和互联的文学辩论已经出现在当地和散居独立以来的暴力，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。调查的文本语料库（部分仍将通过实地研究建立）不仅包括小说，而且还包括金沙萨、卢本巴希、戈马和布卡武等城市当地文学作品中典型的抒情和戏剧性的暴力描写。我们的项目的初步假设定位在描述和解释的暴力在文学作品中的刚果作家在20世纪90年代末，这在历史上恰逢卢旺达的种族灭绝对刚果东部省份和蒙博托政权的结束的影响的变化。我们的分析偏离了临时发现，这种变化的暴力表现在转向远离集中检查殖民权力结构和暴力和反暴力的叙事，以及在减少的兴趣在隐喻，话语检查殖民地的topoi，如“黑暗的心”。因此，语料库将沿着沿着三条调查路线进行审查：（一）刚果文学是否与后殖民和社会科学的暴力理论（如法农，阿伦特，马姆达尼，姆本贝，Reemtsma）进行对话，如果是这样，如何在文本中追踪这一点？(II)在叙述和谈判暴力的方式中，在刚果民主共和国产生的文本之间是否存在紧张关系，主要针对当地观众，在当地上演并通常也在当地出版，以及主要针对西方观众的散居文本？如果是这样的话，这在从20世纪60年代到现在的文学史进程中是如何表达的？(III)文学、诗歌、散文和戏剧能对创伤的接受、复原力的发展和和解的促进做出什么贡献？地方文学和流散文学之间的相互关系是什么？这些最初被用来解释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?