Les Œuvres du Fest'Africa : Les enjeux de la trace dans un « lieu de mémoire » déterritorialisé

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn 1998, the Chadian poet Nocky Djedanoum, who organized each year the Lille-based festival of African literature and culture, launched the Fest'Africa Project: “Rwanda: Writing with a Duty to Remember.” Djedanoum went to Kigali with a group of nine African writers for a two-month period of residence to reflect and write about the Tutsi Genocide of 1994. Presented as commemorative works written mostly by African writers who were not Rwandese and who did not experience directly the genocide (except for Venuste Kayimahe), these texts challenge the “memory sites” as defined by Pierre Nora and broaden the field of memory study. Using Chamoiseau's concept of “Trace,” I will argue that Fest'Africa texts can be read as a deterritorialized act of memorialization with an emphasis on the agency of the reader, able to question and comment what is described to him/her. Revealing the “memory-traces” that exist between Africa and Europe, the Fest'Africa project also reflects on memory as a more global and transnational phenomenon and allows us to question the positionality of those who want to remember. Fest'Africa texts propose an act of commemoration whose narratives are useful to examine the impact of “real” lieux de mémoire upon the Tutsi genocide.