Estigmatização, rotulação e desvio em Nossa Senhora do Nilo, de Scholastique Mukasonga (2017)

Abstract

This article analyzed the processes of stigmatization, labeling and deviation in the school context, taking as a heuristic object the novel Nossa Senhora do Nilo, by the Rwandan writer Scholastique Mukasonga (2017). Articulating testimony and fictional elaboration, the writer exposed the marks of colonialism in the face of cultural, social and religious relations by illustrating the daily life of a Catholic school exclusively for girls (daughters of the Hutu political and economic elite of Rwanda, for the most part) amid the conflict between Tutsis and Hutus that resulted in a civil war (1990-1994) and later in the Rwandan genocide (1994). The article is divided into three sections. In the first, we deal with how the author elaborates on the work of memory in her literary. In the second, we discuss the concepts of stigmatization, labeling and deviance in the light of classic works, as well as more recent studies on the subject. In the third section, we analyze the chapter “O nariz da virgem”, from Nossa Senhora do Nilo, linking it to the phenomenon of stigmatization and labeling that, in that context, contributed to Tutsi students being persecuted and killed in high school, with their consent either silent or declared by the professors and directors of the institution. In the final considerations, we reflect on the fruitfulness of studies that analytically combine the fields of Sociology and Literature.