Violence and Memory in Zimbabwean Literature

Armed Peace in the Postcolonial Era
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-74955-6
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 276 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 453 g

Reihe: Routledge Studies in African Literature

This book investigates how Zimbabwean literary texts subvert state-sponsored amnesia when it comes to the many forms of past and ongoing political violence in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwean Literature provides an important space for confronting the past and reflecting on how violence continues into the present day. This violent past was forgotten either through the promise of violence against those who sought to remember, or by depicting the violence as a necessary tool of a never-ending decolonisation process, or by appealing to the logic of letting bygones be bygones. For instance, by claiming that the five years of the Gukurahundi genocide were ‘a moment of madness’, Robert Mugabe set a climate of state-sponsored amnesia which has persisted through subsequent acts of state violence and into the Mnangagwa era. Drawing on key works by Shimmer Chinodya, Alexander Kanengoni, Yvonne Vera, Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, Brian Chikwava, Chenjerai Hove, Panashe Chigumadzi, and NoViolet Bulawayo, this book investigates how fictional works challenge this state-sponsored amnesia, both in relation to Gukurahundi and other past and ongoing forms of violence. Bringing together iconic literary texts from 1980 to 2022, the book draws a common thread through the texts’ connected histories and highlights their role in de-silencing the past.

Situated at the interface of memory studies and literary criticism, this book will be of interest to researchers across the fields of African literature, politics, development, and history.

Zielgruppe

Academic and Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Chidora, Tanaka

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Historische & Regionale Volkskunde
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Kolonialismus, Imperialismus
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Studien zu einzelnen Ländern und Gebieten
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturen sonstiger Sprachräume Afrikanische Literaturen
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Friedens- und Konfliktforschung
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kolonialgeschichte, Geschichte des Imperialismus
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gewalt und Diskriminierung: Soziale Aspekte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Violent (Re)Births, Armed Peace and the Politics of Memory in Zimababwe  2. Destabilising the War Metanarrative in Shimmer Chinodya’s Harvest Of Thorns and Alexander Kanengoni’s Echoing Silences  3. Narrating Gukurahundi Trauma: A violent independence in the House of Stone  4. A Decade of Crisis, a Decade of Violence: The children Of Harare North and We Need New Names  5. The Forgotten Doubles of NoViolet Bulawayo’s Glory  6. Re-Memorying Nehanda in Chenjerai Hove’s Bones and Panashe Chigumadzi’s These Bones Will Rise Again  7. Conclusion: The future of the past in Zimbabwean politics and literature

Über Autor(innen)

Tanaka Chidora is a Humboldt Fellow (2021–2023), a lecturer in the Department of Literary Studies at the University of Malawi and a research fellow in the Deparment of English, University of the Free State, South Africa. He is the Co-Chief Editor of Matatu: Journal for African Literary and Cultural Studies. Chidora is the author of Because Sadness is Beautiful? (2019), a collection of poems published to critical acclaim in Zimbabwe. The manuscript of his forthcoming novel, Born Location, was longlisted for the Island Prize as Carrying a Country on Your Forehead in 2023.