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part of life: without this naming, they would not exist (the verb ‘to exist’ is probably erroneous because it refers to an a priori that isn’t Rwandan).”579 Th e living and the dead thus cohabit not because of some magical or animist belief, but because the two are onomastically always already
, “Th at Which Resists, Aft er All,” 410. 127 “[In Rwanda, proper names] were intimately linked to the cult ancestors, a linkage that kept alive the genealogical lineages between the dead and the living.” Claudine Vidal, “La Commemoration du génocide au Rwanda: Violence symbolique, mémorisation
hideout he moves like the living dead: “His legs and arms are stiff, and he walks with difficulty” (85). This passage already announces that the roots of his zombification lie in his experiences of unliveable life in his homeland, a failed postcolonial nation-state; the continuum of zombification is later
by European powers. Rather, he notes, far from displaying a desperate need for European intervention, black Africans living during the period following the end of the slave trade saw various developments which allowed for cultural, political and economic revolutions. In the latter part of the 19th
life”. Because of the traveller’s “emotional connection” to the destination, personal memory tourism is an individualistic phenomenon and may be motivated by a search for identity or self-discovery (Marschall 2015 , 37). While the journey represented in Mabanckou’s book qualifies as personal memory
: Principles of Life and Living . By way of a proverb, Fu-Kiau illustrates the importance of the woman in Kongo culture: As long as there is a female “shoot” within the community, it cannot be annihilated. The presence of a female in the community is the symbol of continuity of life in that community, and
mobility. In the second part, Biram has been living in Tenerife for three years. His earlier, flagrantly unrealistic dreams of a life in Europe are totally incongruent with reality. Biram works as a street vendor, and although he wants to be seen as “le maître des lieux” (125) “the owner of the place” in
-establish contact is also interesting in the sense that it juxtaposes two very different contemporary African migrant positions. First of all, there is Ifemelu living a secure and easy-going elite ‘Afropolitan’ life with her wealthy boyfriend and, secondly, there is Obinze, cleaning toilets as an illegal migrant
abnormality and impotence. Todorov clearly suggests that the riots were a reaction to sexual impotence in young “Muslim” men living in France. Finally, he fails to see this same sexual dysfunction in some French politicians and in members of French law enforcement who he implies are by default non-Muslim. As
, the abject have been jettisoned, forced out into a life of displacement” (Nyers 2003 , 1073). As discussed in the previous chapter, the abject is something revolting to the self, but also paradoxically part of it (Kristeva 1982 , 4). As such, the abject poses a threat to the boundaries of the self