Cultural Representations of Massacre ─ Reinterpretations of the Mutiny of Senegal

Over the past sixty years, the massacre of Thiaroye (Senegal), the 1944 mutiny of African soldiers that was severely suppressed by the French army, has been continuously reinterpreted by artists such as L. S. Senghor, F. Keita, Doumbi-Fakoly, O. Sembene, B. B. Diop, R. Bouchareb, and F. F. Faye. In this book, Parent puts together a history of these representations, characterizing their socio-historical role and the way each document (re-)interprets the events. Combining first-hand analysis of the works and their intertextual interactions, as well as an external perspective (which consists of reconstructing the socio-historical contexts of production and reception of each document), Parent engages with history, literature, film, poetics, and politics and highlights the importance of remembering the past.

Sabrina Parent is FRS-FNRS Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Faculte de Philosophie et Lettres at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.