Notre-Dame du Nil (2021), written by Scholastique Mukasonga (1956-), is set in Rwanda in the 1970s. It describes a boarding school modeled after the one where Mukasonga herself went. The students are composed of two ethnic groups, Hutu and Tutsi, but there are divisions among them, which are rooted in Western colonialism. This presentation focuses on an antagonist, Gloriosa, a Hutu student whose father is a great Hutu-supremacist politician. Gloriosa is like the “boss” in the school, looking down on the Tutsi students.
Gloriosa’s character is shaped by her father’s ideology. Her father’s generation experienced the period when Western colonialists favored the Tutsi over the Hutu. The Hutu later achieved a rise in status, which they consider as a result of emancipation from this hierarchy. The West came to favor the Hutu over the Tutsi: the school atmosphere reflects this new hierarchy. Gloriosa destroys the Virgin Mary statue because of its “Tutsi-like” features. Gloriosa also fabricates accusations against the Tutsi, which triggers chaos in the school. She considers these actions as an activist defending Hutu supremacy like her father. This chaos appears the prelude to the genocide in 1994, when the Hutu committed mass violence against the Tutsi. Rather than viewing the genocide through simplistic moral binaries, this presentation investigates how Western colonialism bring the Hutu and the Tutsi into long-standing conflicts, as well as producing radicalized “activists” like Gloriosa who lays the groundwork for the 1994 genocide.

Authors:
Yuto Nakagawa, Kanazawa University, Japan

About the Presenter(s)
I am Yuto Nakagawa, currently a doctoral student at Kanazawa University in Japan. My research interests focus on African literature. I hope to explore its comparative study between America and France in my doctoral thesis.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Tuesday Schedule

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