Reading Testimony: Congolese Civil War and the Trauma of Rape in Dramatic Performances and Fiction
(2022) Narrating Violence in the Postcolonial World — ISBN: [9781003110231], published
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- Abstract
- Rape is often used as a “weapon of war” to destroy communities and identities. Eve Ensler’s chapter “A Teenage Girl’s Guide to Surviving Sex Slavery” (from her book of fictional monologues I Am an Emotional Creature), Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer prize-winning play Ruined, and Jenny Onya’s dance-theatre testimonial performance Elikya na ngai all address the trauma of rape in the context of the Congolese civil war, which has caused the deaths of more than six million people. This chapter argues that these texts and performances not only urge audiences and readers to comprehend the psychological wounds that raped women are left with but also to confront the underlying causes of the conflicts. Using E. Ann Kaplan’s analysis of how empathy articulates moral development, this chapter questions the role of empathy and witnessing, and their ability to make audiences and readers aware of their own complicit position as exploiters of Congolese resources. More specifically, the analysis considers how the move from survivor/victim (Ensler-Nottage) to a multivocal narrative of traitors/perpetrators/Western companies/bystanders/healers (Nottage-Onya) establishes a transnational space where questions of complicity and political responsibility can be addressed.
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Citations
Bragard, V. (2022). Reading Testimony: Congolese Civil War and the Trauma of Rape in Dramatic Performances and Fiction. In Rebecca Romdhani and Daria Tunca (ed.), Narrating Violence in the Postcolonial World. Routledge. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/110762