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The Memory of Violence: trauma in the writings of Alexander Kanengoni and Yvonne Vera and the idea of unreconciled citizenship in Zimbabwe

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 26; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0143659042000339164

1360-2241

Stephen Chan,

Anthropological Studies and Insights

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments An earlier version of this paper was presented to the ecpr Standing Group on International Relations Pan-European Conference, The Hague, 9 September 2004. The author wishes to thank Ranka Primorac, who encouraged him to read Zimbabwean novels and to take an interest in narratology. Notes For such accounts see Martin Meredith, Mugabe: Power and Plunder in Zimbabwe, Oxford: Public Affairs, 2002; David Blair, Degrees in Violence, London: Continuum, 2002; and Andrew Meldrum, Where We Have Hope, London: John Murray, 2004. For example, Janna Thompson, Justice and World Order: A Philosophical Enquiry, London: Routledge, 1992. For example, Andrew Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community, Cambridge: Polity, 1998. For example, Molly Cochran, Normative Theory in International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. See Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Stephen Ellis, The Mask of Anarchy, London: Hurst, 2001. The theme of Patrick Chabal & Jean-Pascal Daloz, Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument, London: James Currey, 1999. Joseph Chaumba, Ian Scoones & William Wolmer, ‘New politics, new livelihoods: agrarian change in Zimbabwe’, Review of African Political Economy, 98, 2003, pp 585 – 608. Ian Phimister & Brian Raftopoulos, Mugabe, Mbeki and the Politics of Anti-Imperialism, Harare: Weaver, 2004. Thabo Mbeki, ‘We'll resist the upside-down view of Africa’, The Post (Lusaka), 9 January 2004. See Stephen Chan, Robert Mugabe: A Life of Power and Violence, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2003. See the excellent survey in Barry Hallen, A Short History of African Philosophy, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002. Dambudzo Marechera, The House of Hunger, Oxford: Heinemann, 1978. Brian Raftopoulos, Beyond the House of Hunger, Harare: Zimbabwe Institute of Development Studies, 1991. Achille Mbembe, ‘Power and obscenity in the post-colonial period: the case of Cameroon’, in James Manor (ed), Rethinking Third World Politics, London: Longman, 1991. For a recent introduction to Ricoeur, see Stephen Chan, ‘A problem for ir: how shall we narrate the saga of bestial man?’, Global Society, 17 (4), 2003, pp 385 – 413. VY Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988, p 186. For extensive coverage of Zimbabwean fiction, see Ranka Primorac, The Place of Tears: The Novel and Politics in Zimbabwe, London: IB Tauris, forthcoming; Robert Muponde & Ranka Primorac (eds), Versions of Zimbabwe: Literature, History and Politics, Harare: Weaver, forthcoming; Rino Zhuwarara, Introduction to Zimbabwean Literature in English, Harare: College Press, 2001; Flora Veit-Wild & Anthony Chennells, Emerging Perspectives on Dambudzo Marechera, Trenton: Africa World Press, 1999; and Flora Veit-Wild, Teachers, Preachers, Non-Believers, London: Hans Zell, 1992. On the issue of land and literature see Stephen Chan & Ranka Primorac, ‘The imagination of land and the reality of seizure: Zimbabwe's complex reinventions’, Columbia University Journal of International Affairs, 57 (2), 2004, pp 63 – 80. For example, E Chipamaunga, A Fighter for Freedom, Gweru: Mambo Press, 1983. Alexander Kanengoni, Effortless Tears, Harare: Baobab, 1993. Alexander Kanengoni, Echoing Silences, Harare: Baobab, 1997. Bao Ninh, The Sorrow of War, London: Secker & Warburg, 1993. Terence Ranger, ‘Herbert Chitepo: assassination, confession, narrative’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 29 (4), 2003, p 1001. Luise White, The Assassination of Herbert Chitepo: Texts and Politics in Zimbabwe, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003. Alexander Kanengoni, ‘One hundred days with Robert Mugabe’, Daily News (Harare), 12 April 2003. However, in a more recent twist, Kanengoni has criticised Vera for accepting the Swedish pen Tucholsky Award—an award given a writer ‘persecuted, threatened or in exile from his or her country’—on the grounds that Vera has never been persecuted (letter to the Herald (Harare), 9 July 2004), which is true. She is, however, in what might pass for voluntary exile in Canada. Both the Mugabe nostalgia and Vera criticism are, to be fair to Kanengoni, carefully modulated statements. He is perhaps surviving exactly the murderous difficulties of Zimbabwean life. Nevertheless, he and Vera will become opposite qualities—betrayal and virtue—to those who aggregate ethics in Oxford dining rooms. Stanlake Samkange, On Trial for my Country, Oxford: Heinemann, 1966. Even in the title of Robert Muponde & Mandi Taruvinga (eds), Sign and Taboo: Perspectives on the Poetic Fiction of Yvonne Vera, Harare: Weaver, 2002. Yvonne Vera, The Stone Virgins, Harare: Weaver, 2002. Jocelyn Alexander, ‘Dissident perspectives on Zimbabwe's post-independence war’, Africa, 68 (2), 1998, pp 151 – 182. Solomon Mutswairo, Feso, Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1974. See Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970. Paul Ricoeur, Fallible Man, Chicago, IL: Regnery, 1965. Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1992. H Odera Oruka, Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and the Modern Debate on African Philosophy, Leiden: Brill, 1990. Terence Ranger, Peasant Consciousness and Guerrilla War in Zimbabwe, London: James Currey, 1985; David Lan, Guns and Rain, London: James Currey, 1985; and Norma J Kriger, Zimbabwe's Guerrilla War: Peasant Voices, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Billy Mukamuri, Making Sense of Social Forestry: A Political and Contextual Study of Forestry Practice in South Central Zimbabwe, Tampere: Acta Universitatis Tamperensis, 1995. See Grant Lilford, ‘Traces of tradition’, in Veit-Wild & Chennells, Emerging Perspectives on Dambudzo Marechera, p 291. Pamela Reynolds, Traditional Healers and Childhood in Zimbabwe, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1996. See Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community, pp 198 – 201.