"Je bazarde mon corps territoire": Space, Bodies and Memory in Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila

In his award-winning novel, Tram 83, set in a fictitious African country torn in half by civil war, the author Fiston Mwanza Mujila portrays with irony the challenges of writing literature about colonial memory. In contrast to his protagonist, Lucien, however, Mwanza chooses to depict the immediacy of life in the Ville-Pays' only bar, the Tram 83, where most of the novel takes place. However, memory of the colonial and industrialised past rhythmically punctuates and punctures the texture of this immediacy, in particular via the topographical tropes of the Ville-Pays: that of the "unfinished" station; that of the former colonial neighbourhood dubbed the "Vampires"; and lastly that of the "Esperance" ("Hope") mine. Descriptions of these sites often end up confusing the human bodies of those forced to sell themselves to survive in the Ville-Pays' mining economy, with the hollowed out topography of the post-colonial city. Through an analysis of these sites - symbols of Twentieth Century imperial confidence - this article will examine both the tensions and the continuities between, on the one hand, the emergence of memory, and on the other, the breathless and locomotive rhythm of present day life in the post-colonial city.