Nação e pertencimento na Ruanda de Scholastique Mukasonga: uma leitura de Nossa Senhora do Nilo

Abstract

Based on Our Lady of The Nile, by Rwandan writer Scholastique Mukasonga, the following work suggests that connections between nationalism and post-colonial Rwanda’s culture may be observed as the result of the coexistence of two senses of belonging, i.e., two sets of actions, bodilinesses, and discourses which guide the life of people from a specific territory or a specific culture. One of these sets, inherited from the colonization, is the history-guided or origin-guided sense of belonging. The other is the memory-guided or ancestrality-guided sense of belonging, which comes from pre-colonial times. Furthermore, based on The Rwandan Genocide (1994), and on the impact that the rivalry between hutus and tutsis has in Ms. Scholastique’s life and work, this monography argues that the coexistence of these two ways of life does not mean they are equivalent, especially when it comes to a matter of surviving in Rwanda.