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Citation |
Gigliotti S. Aust. J. Polit. Hist. 2007; 53(1): 84-95. |
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Copyright |
(Copyright © 2007, John Wiley and Sons) |
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DOI |
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PMID |
unavailable |
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Abstract |
This article investigates three recent human rights memoirs that chronicle the Rwandan genocide of 1994: Emergency Sex (and other desperate measures): True Stories from a War Zone, Shake Hands with the Devil: the failure of humanity in Rwanda, and The Zanzibar Chest: a memoir of love and war. I use these memoirs to explore the complexities of bearing witness to ethnic violence and war as an autobiographical subject shaped by the memory of historical atrocity — as a besieged self in traumatic occupations of the UN protector (Roméo Dallaire), lawyer (Kenneth Cain), and war correspondent (Aidan Hartley). Finally, I suggest that the authors of these memoirs are secondary witnesses, claimants to ethical truths and writers of atrocity testimony that complicate the burgeoning life-telling compulsion of what is and who can claim to be a genocide victim. |