Incendies de Wadji Mouawad: les méandres de la mémoire

Abstract

While memory guarantees a degree of continuity between past and present, it is not without shortcomings. Powerless in the face of the future and threatened by oblivion, memory has the ability to imprison individuals and communities alike in a version of the past that has been promoted to the level of historical truth. This is why the work of Lebanese-Canadian playwright Wajdi Mouawad (a rising figure in the world of French-language theatre) generally prefers the international kind of memory provided by literature to the historical ties commonly invoked in family retellings of the past. Mouawad’s reworking of memory is particularly present in his best-known play,Littoral (1997), which addresses the various ways in which institutionalized forms of memory prevent the development of individual identities.