The politics of mourning: Survivor contributions to memorials in post-genocide Rwanda

Abstract

The memory of the 1994 genocide overshadows the present in Rwanda. The landscape is marked with burial and memorial sites, and April has become a month of mourning with national genocide commemorations held annually. The genocide memorials have been sanctioned and promoted by the state, but they are also the product of initiatives by genocide survivors. This article argues that survivors have made substantial and distinctive contributions to memorialization in Rwanda. It explores a survivor politics of memory and its relationship to trauma and grief.

International Constructions of National Memories: The Aims and Effects of Foreign Donors' Support for Genocide Remembrance in Rwanda

“…Rwanda's genocide remembrance has been marked by a troubled relationship between the RPF agenda and the demands and activities of mainly Tutsi genocide survivors, the group that has a primary claim to the ownership of remembrance (Ibreck 2010). Many members of the ethnic Hutu majority also see memorialization as a mechanism for ascribing collective guilt and excluding them from political power (Lemarchand 2009).…”

Le paysage relationnel du deuil

“…Certaines enquêtes soulignent, tout d'abord, que les significations attribuées à la disparition sont façonnées par le contexte culturel, éco-nomique et social (Robins, 2010;Tully, 1995). Les attentes de la communauté vis-à-vis des survivants et les discours entourant les disparitions, la guerre et l'expression publique des émotions -nécessairement chargés d'idéologie et influencés par les intérêts politiques (Burchianti, 2004;Ibreck, 2010;Mukta, 1997) -ont ainsi une influence majeure sur la capacité des familles concernées de faire face à la perte. Selon Quirk et Casco (1994), contrairement aux idées reçues attribuant le niveau de détresse des familles de disparus à l'incertitude ou à l'absence de corps, leur souffrance pourrait être surtout liée à leur isolement social et à l'atmosphère de peur qui les entoure.…”

The Performance of International Diplomacy at Kigali Memorial Centre, Rwanda

“…These include papers on: the contribution of Rwandese survivor groups to memorial management (Ibreck 2010;Jessee 2017b); the influence of non-Rwandan developmental organisations (Ibreck 2013); the politics, affects, and effects of the ongoing exhumation, identification, internment, rearrangement, and cleaning of the human remains at the memorials (Jessee 2012;Major 2015); the role of the memorials in communicating a single authorised narrative (Jessee 2017a); the role of the memorials in peacebuilding, including the contrast between memorial narratives and civilian memories (King 2010); the location of the memorials within an international post-conflict heritage-healing complex (Giblin 2013a); and the investigation of the memorials as a form of dark, difficult, or uncomfortable tourism (Robb 2009;Mckinney 2012;Friedrich and Johnston 2013), including the effect of the memorials on tourists as analysed through online tourist photographs of human remains at the sites (Bolin 2012). In terms of memorial performativity, Bolin's (2012) study is of interest.…”

“…The memorial research was undertaken as part of a larger project that considered the role of heritage in postconflict development in western Great Lakes Africa, specifically Rwanda and Uganda. In Rwanda, the research was carried out with the permission of the Institute of National Museums of Rwanda (INMR) and the National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide (CNLG), government organisations that have historically managed the memorials in collaboration with survivor groups (Giblin 2013a;Ibreck 2010Ibreck , 2013. To understand the post-conflict heritage effects of the memorials, the research employed participant observation, interviews with visitors and staff, and photographic recording and analysis of all available visitor books, amassing records of thousands of entries made over the past decade (Giblin 2013a).…”

“…Over the past decade, Rwanda's genocide memorials and memorialisation events have received increasing academic attention (Cook 2006;Caplan 2007;Guyer 2009;Robb 2009;Brandsetter 2010;Ibreck 2010Ibreck , 2013King 2010;Tadjo 2010;Sodaro 2011;Bolin 2012;McKinney 2012;Jessee 2012Jessee , 2017aJessee , 2017bGiblin 2013a, Forthcoming;Meirheinrich 2013;Eltringham 2014Eltringham , 2015Jinks 2014;Major 2015). However, the linked performance of memorialisation and international diplomacy at the KMC has not been explored academically, despite clear examples of international diplomacy taking place at the KMC (see McKinney 2012).…”