The Käte Hamburger Lectures provide deeper insight into the centre’s ongoing research, convey these ideas to the wider university community, and invite the public to engage in meaningful discussions on cultural practices of reparation.
The Käte Hamburger Centre for Cultural Practices of Reparation (CURE) and the CEUS | Cluster for European Studies warmly invite you to attend the next Käte Hamburger Lecture at Saarland University. This series allows fellows from the centre to share their latest research perspectives on cultural practices of reparation. After the lectures, audience members will have the opportunity to engage with key topics in more detail during a public discussion session.
Susanne Gehrmann & Marie Guthmüller:
Violence and Reparation in Literary Narratives of the Democratic Republic of Congo |
Violence et réparation dans les narrations littéraires de la République Démocratique du Congo
According to Fanon, writing on colonialism and independence struggles in 1961, violent acts necessitate reparation, but can also themselves represent a form of reparation. In contemporary decolonial debates, Kadia Attia emphasizes that the wounds of post-colonial societies cannot be healed through material aid alone: “la réparation, c’est la conscience de la blessure” (Attia 2018: 34). It is this consciousness that inspires artistic approaches to explore the (im)possibilities of collective and individual repair. In this context, we examine the literary production of today’s Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Congo Free State – Belgian Congo – Republic of Congo – Zaïre) and its diaspora. The history of the resourceful Congo has been marked by violent ruptures and regimes in the wake of colonialism, extractivism, decolonization, postcolonial cleptocratic dictatorship, counter-rebellions and not least by the structural violence that all of these imply.
Our readings of two different, yet interconnected, corpora reveal that the experience of violence is expressed differently in locally published literature compared to the globally better-known literature of the diaspora; in terms of content, form, and rhetoric. Texts are shaped by the place of their enunciation, the literary fields in which the authors are involved, and the target audience they address. These factors also affect the conceptualization of reparation processes. In our talk we strive to relate and compare the narratives of violence that have emerged locally in Kinshasa, Lubumbashi, and Goma to those of the Congolese diaspora publishing in the Global North, and demonstrate which (im)possibilities of reparation and healing processes literature proposes.
The lecture will be delivered in two languages (English and French).
The Käte Hamburger Lectures provide deeper insight into the centre’s ongoing research, convey these ideas to the wider university community, and invite the public to engage in meaningful discussions on cultural practices of reparation.
Live Lecture Broadcast
The lecture will be broadcast live via Microsoft Teams on 20 May starting at 6:00 p.m. with the lecture starting no later than 6:15 p.m.
