O genocídio ruandês e as estratégias de resistência à dominação em narrativas de Scholastique Mukasonga

Abstract

During the Genocide in Rwanda, which occurred in April of 1994, more than 800 thousand tutsis that were called and considered as cockroaches were brutally murdered by the Hutus in about 100 days of slaughter, orchestrated long before by colonizers and mentally colonized people, products of the nefarious action of European powers in the country. This context provides to the author, Scholastique Mukasonga, appeals to Literature as a way to pay homage to their dead who were not buried. Writing allowed the working-through of the unsaid mourning to survivors. The author narrated the memory of those who were decimated, lending them the voice through the literary writing. The historiographic meta-fiction made possible a path where the author would build the narratives in a critical point of view about the past. This qualitative research aims to draw analyses of the first three Rwandan narratives translated into Portuguese and published in Brazil: Cockroaches (2018), The Barefoot Woman (2017), and Our Lady of the Nile (2017). Literature was and is used through the Rwandan Mukasonga to tell about the process of Genocide occurred in Rwanda. It is used to emphasize the female characters and the relations of domination and resistance established. To support our analysis, we use reflections on Literature, History, memory and resistance, based on the postulations of some authors, especially para Primo Levi (2013), (2022), Sarlo (2007), (2016) e Seligmann-Silva (2008), Candau (2011), Gomes (2011), Cortázar (2018), Figueiredo (2022) among others. In addition, in order to highlight the importance of literature produced by women, we base discussions proposed by authors such as Lerner (2019), Padilha (2014), Kilomba (2019), Saffioti (2015), Perrot (2017) the main readings to female characters identification, in the analyzed works. These, despite of being inserted in a situation of oppression and violation of rights, found different and necessary forms of resistance to domination in some situations. The narratives of Mukasonga work as a complaint scream against the denial and forgetfulness, by resorting to the literary text to recover the figures put aside by the genocide process.