Autochthonomous Transfigurations of Race and Gender in Twenty-First-Century Transnational Genocide Testimonial Narratives

Abstract

This chapter explores depictions and representations of the genocide of Rwanda in order to examine how “ autochthonomy” and “ lakou consciousness” make themselves manifest in global/transnational contexts. What each of the representations reveals is a partial exposure of a silence that appears to be symptomatic of trauma. The chapter relies on Pierre Bourdieu’s twin-concepts of the “unthinkable” and “unnameable” and how these concepts might be of further use in understanding the representation of the implicit “silence” of trauma. The chapter ultimately argues that artists who consciously emulate African Diasporic aesthetics in their representations of genocide also engage counter-hegemonic modes of representation that are explicitly and increasingly feminist regardless of the producer’s gender identity.