Department of History, University of Exeter, c/o Old Library Mail Room, Prince of Wales Drive, Exeter, EX4 4SB, UK.
Cult Med Psychiatry. 2021 Mar;45(1):74-96. doi: 10.1007/s11013-020-09668-4.
Child soldiers have been heavily involved in contemporary African warfare. Since the 1990s, the 'child soldier crisis' has become a major humanitarian and human rights project. The figure of the child soldier has often been taken as evidence of the 'barbarism', dehumanization and trauma generated by modern warfare, but such images can obscure the complex reality of children's experiences of being part of armed groups during conflict. This article uses the published memoirs of former child soldiers from Sierra Leone, Sudan, Uganda, Eritrea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to explore the instrumental and discursive nexus between child soldiers, memory, violence and humanitarianism. It assesses how (former-) children combatants remember and recount their experiences of war, and how these narratives can be shaped by humanitarian, literary and/or therapeutic framings. The article argues that these memoirs' significance lies in their affective truths and what they reveal about children's experience, and narrations, of war. Former child soldiers engage with, but also challenge, dominant contemporary humanitarian discourses surrounding childhood and violence to develop a 'victim, savage, saviour, campaigner' framework for their narratives. The article historically contextualizes the emergence of the 'child soldier memoir', before analysing the narratives of recruitment, indoctrination, and violence recounted by these former child soldiers, and their attempts to rework their identities in a post-conflict environment. It explores how former child soldiers narrate suffering and deploy discourses of trauma in their memoirs: some seeking to process wartime traumas, others leveraging their own suffering to position themselves as campaigners for those children still caught in conflict.
儿童兵在当代非洲战争中大量参与。自 20 世纪 90 年代以来，“儿童兵危机”成为了一项重大的人道主义和人权项目。儿童兵的形象常常被视为现代战争中“野蛮”、非人性化和创伤的证据，但这些形象可能掩盖了儿童在冲突中加入武装团体的复杂现实。本文利用塞拉利昂、苏丹、乌干达、厄立特里亚和刚果民主共和国的前儿童兵发表的回忆录，探讨了儿童兵、记忆、暴力和人道主义之间的工具性和话语联系。它评估了（前）儿童战斗人员如何记住和讲述他们的战争经历，以及这些叙述如何受到人道主义、文学和/或治疗框架的影响。本文认为，这些回忆录的意义在于它们的情感真实性，以及它们揭示了儿童对战争的体验和叙述。前儿童兵参与了主流的当代人道主义关于儿童和暴力的话语，但也对其提出了挑战，以形成他们的叙述的“受害者、野蛮人、拯救者、活动家”框架。本文首先将“儿童兵回忆录”的出现置于历史背景下，然后分析这些前儿童兵所讲述的招募、洗脑和暴力经历，以及他们在后冲突环境中试图重塑自己身份的尝试。它探讨了前儿童兵如何在回忆录中叙述苦难并运用创伤话语：一些人试图处理战时创伤，另一些人则利用自己的苦难将自己定位为仍处于冲突中的儿童的活动家。
