Human rights, child-soldier narratives, and the problem of form

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Periodical article

Title:	Human rights, child-soldier narratives, and the problem of form
Author:	Moynagh, Maureen
Year:	2011
Periodical:	Research in African Literatures (ISSN 0034-5210)
Volume:	42
Issue:	4
Pages:	39-59
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Africa
Subjects:	novels child soldiers
About persons:	Ahmadou Kourouma (1927-2003) Uzodinma Iweala (1982-) Emmanuel Boundzéki Dongala (1941-) Chris Abani (1966-)
External link:	http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/research_in_african_literatures/v042/42.4.moynagh.pdf
Abstract:	This essay speaks to recent debates in the literature of human rights by focusing on the figure of the African child soldier. The author argues that the child-soldier figure represents a kind of limit-case for human rights discourse. Reading memoirs by former child-soldiers and memoir-style novels by the writers Ahmadou Kourouma ('Allah n'est pas obligé', 2000), Uzodinma Iweala ('Beasts of no nation', 2005), Emmanuel Dongala ('Johnny chien méchant', 2002), and Chris Abani ('Song for night', 2007), she contends that these works mobilize sentiment, Bildung, and the picaresque in their effort to negotiate and contest both the 'politics of life' of humanitarian intervention and the necropolitical formations that produce child soldiers. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]