Gostaríamos de informá-lo de que amanhã seremos mortos com nossas famílias: invisibility and testimony

Abstract

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-7917.2014v19n2p94

This article aims to reflect on the testimony of a collective trauma in the book-report of the American journalist Philip Gourevitch “Gostaríamos de informá-lo de que amanhã seremos mortos com nossas famílias.” The narrative deals with the invisibility experienced by Rwandans, especially Tutsi, during and after the genocide in 1994. The journalist, who becomes the mediator of a country, that is on the edge of the world, allows those individuals who experienced the genocide in Rwanda to talk. In this way our objective will be to discuss how, from their story of pain and violence, they can continue to live. Through their speaking, it is believed that those invisible individuals to the eyes of the world can be recognized and survive. For this, will be use the concepts of trauma and impossibilities of say from Freud and Márcio Seligmann-Silva; reflection about of celebration of the past through revived reports, from Beatriz Sarlo, and the questions about individual and collective memory and forgetting, of Maurice Halbwachs and Pierre Nora.