Gender, narrative and affect: Top-down politics of commemoration in post-genocide Rwanda

Selimovic, Johanna Mannergren

doi:10.1177/1750698017730869

Cited by 16 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…13 Concrete examples of recent post-war memorialisation fixtures abound, including, inter alia, the victims' statues of Rwanda; the martyrs' gates of Nepal, and the memorial gardens of Northern Ireland. 14 Nonetheless, memorialisation as a peace-building tool has drawn criticism over the years. One of the more salient critiques relate to the manner in which post-war memorialisation is prone to politicisation.…”

Section: Theorising Post-war Memorialisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Post-war memorialisation as everyday peace? Exploring everyday (dis-) engagements with the Maoist martyrs’ gate of Beni Bazaar in Nepal

Lundqvist

2019

Conflict, Security & Development

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The academic debates on postwar memorialisation and everyday peace tend to appear in relative isolation from one another. Yet, there is arguably much to gain from integrating them, by exploring howand to what effectpost-war monuments are incorporated into everyday life. To this end, this article studies the everyday interactions that residents of Beni Bazaar, Nepal, have developed in relation to the recently erected Maoist martyrs' gate. As such, narrative ellipsis, local cooperation and popular culture are identified as three distinct ways in which the gate has become entangled with everyday life in the city. I argue that these everyday interactions represent inherently political acts, which in subtle ways serve to destabilise the politically divisive 'message' of the postwar monument. Hence, it makes sense to think of these everyday interactions as a form of bottom-up peacebuilding in their own rightalbeit to varying degrees.

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Section: Theorising Post-war Memorialisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Post-war memorialisation as everyday peace? Exploring everyday (dis-) engagements with the Maoist martyrs’ gate of Beni Bazaar in Nepal

Lundqvist

2019

Conflict, Security & Development

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“…As Selimovic demonstrates "the process involves a multitude of communities and agents of remembrance with different aims that hold varying degrees of transformative agency and aims, for example, civil society associations, international donors and 'ordinary' individuals with a need to mourn." 43 In this paper, we show that this is particularly pertinent to the case of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The genocide has been recognized by the Iraqi High Tribunal and a number of European parliaments, 44 and it is a crucial part of the narrative of the Kurdish struggle for selfdetermination.…”

Section: Collective Memory and The Halabja Genocidementioning

confidence: 81%

Collective Memory in Post-Genocide Societies: Rethinking Enduring Trauma and Resilience in Halabja

Karim

Başer²

2022

Rev. Middle East Stud.

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This article investigates the collective memory that occurred as a result of the chemical attack on Halabja, on March 16, 1988. In light of discussions that deal with memory and reconciliation in post-genocide societies, we look at how collective memory and “postmemory” are formed among the survivors and their descendants. The merit of the article is that it brings together the victim's accounts and creates a bottom-up perspective that challenges the official accounts created by Kurdish and non-Kurdish elites as part of top-down narratives on what happened that day in Halabja and how it should be commemorated. The interviewee narratives illustrate that people of Halabja consider the memory of the chemical attack as an enduring trauma that creates a shared rendering of the past and continues to shape their collective identity. While each generation transfers this collective memory to the next, they also seek justice via shared commemoration practices outside official discourses. In their narratives, reprobation is not directed solely toward the Saddam Hussein regime, but also toward the current rulers of the Kurdistan Region as well.

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“…Regarding memorials, this requires focusing on specific characteristics, such as matter, style and form, and on how these serve as a metaphor for violent conflict, death and destruction, as well as analysing how they evoke emotions such as sadness or joy, intimidation or liberation, despair or hope, captivity or freedom and so on. In relation to violent conflict, the analysis focuses on ‘heritage that hurts’ (Mannergren Selimovic, 2020; Sather-Wagstaff, 2016a) 2 and argues on the level of the strategic employment of aesthetic form to potentially stimulate particular emotional responses in visitors. 3…”

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confidence: 99%

Tracing the politics of aesthetics: From imposing, via counter to affirmative memorials to violence

Buckley-Zistel

2021

Memory Studies

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Memorials have become increasingly relevant in societies seeking to come to terms with the past of mass violence and there is a growing body of academic scholarship that scrutinises the politics of memory in divided societies. This article takes a different approach to the politics of memorials: it does not focus on what is remembered, that is, to what a memorial testifies, but how memory at a memorial (supposedly) takes place through the aesthetic strategies put to work. It contributes to emerging literature which explores aspects of performativity and the politics of affect. The objective is, however, to take it one step further by not only shifting attention to studying the engagement with, experience and performance at these sites but also to the politics of the aesthetics choice that promote this engagement. To do so, it differentiates between three aesthetic styles of memorials: imposing, counter and affirmative memorials that were all developed at a particular time in order to pursue particular political and social objectives. The current phenomenon, affirmative memorials, holds that there is a duty to remember and is firmly embedded in efforts to build peace, advance liberal norms and contribute to transitional justice. Pursuing this strategy is however at odds with the aesthetic style of these affirmative memorials that is derived from counter memorials and celebrates plurality and openness rather than wanting to affirm one message.

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Gender, narrative and affect: Top-down politics of commemoration in post-genocide Rwanda

Cited by 16 publications

References 30 publications

Post-war memorialisation as everyday peace? Exploring everyday (dis-) engagements with the Maoist martyrs’ gate of Beni Bazaar in Nepal

Post-war memorialisation as everyday peace? Exploring everyday (dis-) engagements with the Maoist martyrs’ gate of Beni Bazaar in Nepal

Collective Memory in Post-Genocide Societies: Rethinking Enduring Trauma and Resilience in Halabja

Tracing the politics of aesthetics: From imposing, via counter to affirmative memorials to violence

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