“Today, we’re all broken.”: postcolonialism, trauma, and narrating genocide through comics.
Lappalainen, Saara (2022)
Lappalainen, Saara
2022
Master's Programme in Global Society
Yhteiskuntatieteiden tiedekunta - Faculty of Social Sciences
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2022-05-10
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202204253506
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202204253506
Tiivistelmä
In 1994, in a small African nation of Rwanda, a civil war between the Hutu and the Tutsi turned into 100 days of genocide. As the Western world watched, the Hutu looted, raped, and slaughtered an estimation of 800 000 Tutsi as well an estimation of 10 000 Twa. First brushed off as a civil war fuelled by tribal hatred in the Western media, it has now been established that the Rwandan genocide was a result of ethnic hatred strengthened by colonial involvement of the past and meticulous mobilisation of the Hutu population by the nation’s elite.
Narratives play a central part in the societies’ processes towards holistic forms of justice, reconciliation, and stability in transitional societies. All discourse on ethnicity is banned and classified as “genocidal ideology” in contemporary Rwanda. It has been argued that the state-sanctioned narrative, which suppresses any reference to pre-genocide differences and Hutu -Tutsi conflict, has not affected the root causes of political and social insecurity in the country nor has it cultivated holistic forms of justice. Instead, the narrative operates as a tool to suppress political opposition and silence underlying tensions, preventing effective reconciliation processes in Rwanda.
I examine how the Franco-Belgian comic book Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda by J.P. Stassen contributes to the construction of the representation of the Rwandan genocide, especially in the context of Western knowledge tradition. Ultimately, I investigate how comics and graphic narratives in general as a visual and verbal construct can contribute to the creation and contestation of narratives around political crises and atrocities. I do this by examining the comic book’s aestheticization of trauma and postcolonial criticism while relying upon a theoretical framework provided by postcolonial theory, trauma theory, and art and international politics. I employ narrative, textual, and visual analysis which in their manifoldness help to tackle comics’ qualities as a unique form of expression that combines images, words, and other semantic levels.
This thesis aims to investigate how comics as a narrative, visual and verbal construct contribute to the construction and contestation of views on the Rwandan genocide. Additionally, through the findings of my research, I encourage further investigation of comic books and aesthetic material’s relationship with international politics as well as an inquiry on the communicative and narrative possibilities comics offer to communication and narration of political crises.
Narratives play a central part in the societies’ processes towards holistic forms of justice, reconciliation, and stability in transitional societies. All discourse on ethnicity is banned and classified as “genocidal ideology” in contemporary Rwanda. It has been argued that the state-sanctioned narrative, which suppresses any reference to pre-genocide differences and Hutu -Tutsi conflict, has not affected the root causes of political and social insecurity in the country nor has it cultivated holistic forms of justice. Instead, the narrative operates as a tool to suppress political opposition and silence underlying tensions, preventing effective reconciliation processes in Rwanda.
I examine how the Franco-Belgian comic book Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda by J.P. Stassen contributes to the construction of the representation of the Rwandan genocide, especially in the context of Western knowledge tradition. Ultimately, I investigate how comics and graphic narratives in general as a visual and verbal construct can contribute to the creation and contestation of narratives around political crises and atrocities. I do this by examining the comic book’s aestheticization of trauma and postcolonial criticism while relying upon a theoretical framework provided by postcolonial theory, trauma theory, and art and international politics. I employ narrative, textual, and visual analysis which in their manifoldness help to tackle comics’ qualities as a unique form of expression that combines images, words, and other semantic levels.
This thesis aims to investigate how comics as a narrative, visual and verbal construct contribute to the construction and contestation of views on the Rwandan genocide. Additionally, through the findings of my research, I encourage further investigation of comic books and aesthetic material’s relationship with international politics as well as an inquiry on the communicative and narrative possibilities comics offer to communication and narration of political crises.