Elements of the abject and the romantic in the novel Inyenzi: a story of love and genocide (2007)

Abstract

One of the major challenges of writing the Rwandan genocide is how to move away from figuring it as a spectacle, without minimising the significance of the genocide in the cultural history of Rwanda. Although nearly a million Tutsis and some moderate Hutus perished in the Rwandan genocide, some Tutsis and moderate Hutus survived. Yet very little creative art has devoted itself to exploring in metaphors and images how these people survived. Celebrated films such as Hotel Rwanda provide gory scenes of the killing of the Tutsis as background to the creation of their heroes. In sharp contrast Andrew Brown's novel, Inyenzi: a story of love and genocide, is not oblivious to this dimension, but it deliberately foregrounds the positive contribution of individuals and the much reviled Christian Church showing that some Hutus and Tutsis joined forces to redefine themselves through identities that transcended ethnicity. The aim of this article is to briefly highlight the figurative contours of what Julia Kristeva (1982) has described as the abject depicted in the novel Inyenzi: a story of love and genocide. The article argues that the presence of the abject in literature underlines or invokes the desire to work for the creation of a just Rwandan society. The article demonstrates that the depiction of the abject in Inyenzi: a story of love and genocide gives way to the re-establishment, retrieval and re-interpretation of romantic narratives whose social vision reveals an aspiration for a peaceful life and social reconciliation amongst the ethnic groups of Rwanda.