Decolonising violence through the ineffable: the case of Africa’s world war

Abstract

ABSTRACTSome aspects of violent experiences seem difficult to express. Furthermore, directly describing what one knows about these experiences seems to be of limited value in enhancing one’s understanding of them. Thus, merely representing what one already knows about violence and conflict seems inadequate. To overcome this, this paper proposes the accommodation of the ineffable in representations of violence and trauma to destabilise reductive, binary representations of violence and trauma common within colonial discourse. It argues that one fruitful area in which to engage the ineffable without explaining it away, is through examining aesthetic representations of violence and trauma. Furthermore, such aesthetic representations, because they are affective and facilitate both reflective and performative truth also support political engagement and may thus be effective in combatting epistemic erasure of marginal positions in a way that helps to open up spaces to hear the ‘Other’ on his/her own terms. This argument is applied to an analysis of Okeowo’s (2017) novel, A Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Women and Men Fighting Extremism in Africa and Axe and Hamilton’s graphic narrative Army of God: Joseph Kony’s War in Africa, which both deal with conflict in and around the Democratic Republic of the Congo (1997–2003). The close consideration of alternative representations of violence that brings the ineffable into the frame is crucial to moving beyond the impasse presented by the legacy of prejudice inherent in the West’s interpretations of Africa, where the ‘Other’ is still too often written out of an ongoing colonial discourse.