Memories of Violence in Peru and the Congo

Gilbert Shang Ndi is a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Cluster of Excellence – Africa Multiple, at the University of Bayreuth, working on the Project: Black Atlantic Revisited: African and South American UNESCO-World Heritage Sites and "Shadowed Spaces" of Performative Memory. A member of the Junges Kolleg (Young Colleague) Programme of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities (Munich), he recently completed a Feodor Lynen Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the Universidad de los Andes, Colombia. He received his PhD in comparative literature from the University of Bayreuth in 2014. Gilbert Shang Ndi is the author of State/Society: Narrating Transformations in Selected African Novels (2017) and has coedited Tracks and Traces of Violence (2017) and Re-Writing Pasts, Imagining Futures: Critical Explorations of Contemporary African Fiction and Theater (2017).

• General Introduction 1. Historical Contexts of Violence in Peru and the Congo 2. The Coloniality of Power and the Poetics of Excess/Scarcity 3. Ways of Dying: The Horror of Witnessing and the Obscenity of Violence 4. Writing the Aftermath: Narratives of Return and Memories of Loss 5. Righting the Aftermath: On the Ethics of Recognition General Conclusion

"Gilbert Shang Ndi’s Memories of Violence in Peru and the Congo: Writing on the Brink shows us how African and Latin American histories might productively be read together. His brilliantly original comparative study of Peru and the Congo drives home the haunting similarities in the experiences of colonial brutality and postcolonial memory in far-flung corners of the world."Orin Starn, Professor, Cultural Anthropology and History, Duke University, USA."Violence, like a virus, is no more local. Likewise, it is not merely a reality of the past but that which renders unhabitable our very future. From structural violence (distribution of goods, services, vaccines) to direct violence (against the poor, women, immigrants) it is evident that this century has witnessed a recrudescence of violence of all kinds. In this catastrophic scenario that exposes what man can do to fellow man, it is imperative to reflect critically on the ruptures endured by our social fabric. I therefore commend this critical work by Gilbert Shang Ndi, which postulates a rethinking of the most violent actuality: the fratricide of the state against the nation."Julio Ortega, Professor, Latin American Literature, Brown University, USA"Memories of Violence in Peru and the Congo: Writing on the Brink is a timely comparative literary study of Africa and Latin America. The most interesting aspect of this book is its rigorous and seamless weaving of memory and re-memory from a wide spectrum and dimension of experiences; critically examining histories of violence and their aftermath. This book by Gilbert Shang Ndi, like his previous works, is a welcome companion to scholars and students of comparative Literature." Christopher Odhiambo Joseph, Professor, Literature and Applied Drama/Theatre, Moi University, Kenya