Transmitting Memories in Rwanda

Transmitting Memories in Rwanda PDF

Author: Claver Irakoze

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022-10-31

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 9004525203

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This book recounts the personal life story of Claver Irakoze who survived the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi as a child. Now a parent of young children, the narrative focuses on issues surrounding childhood, parenting and the transmission of memories between generations.

After Genocide

After Genocide PDF

Author: Nicole Fox

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres

Published: 2021-07-27

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0299332209

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Nicole Fox investigates the ways memorials can shape the experiences of survivors decades after massacres have ended. She examines how memorializations can both heal and hurt, especially when they fail to represent all genders, ethnicities, and classes of those afflicted.

Complexities and Dangers of Remembering and Forgetting in Rwanda

Complexities and Dangers of Remembering and Forgetting in Rwanda PDF

Author: Olivier Nyirubugara

Publisher: Sidestone Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 9088901104

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Can a society, a culture, a country, be trapped by its own memories? The question is not easy to answer, but it would not be a bad idea to cautiously say: 'It depends'. This book is about one society - Rwanda - and its culture, traditions, identities, and memories. More specifically, it discusses some of the ways in which ethnic identities and related memories constitute a deadly trap that needs to be torn apart if mass violence is to be eradicated in that country. It looks into everyday cultural practices such as child naming and oral traditions (myths and tales, proverbs, war poetry etc.) and into political practices that govern the ways in which citizens conceptualise the past. Rwanda was engulfed in a bloody war from 1990 until 1994, the last episode of which was a genocide that claimed about a million lives amongst the Tutsi minority. This book - the first in the Memory Traps series - provides a new understanding of how a seemingly quiet society can suddenly turn into a scene of the most horrible inter-ethnic crimes. It offers an analysis of the complexities and dangers resulting from the ways in which memories are managed both at a personal level and at a collective level. The main point is that Rwandans have become hostages of their memories of the long-gone and the recent past. The book shows how these memories follow ethnic lines and lead to a state of cultural hypocrisy on the one hand, and to permanent conflict - either open and brutal, or latent and beneath the surface - on the other hand. Written from a memory studies perspective and informed by critical theory, philosophy, literature, [oral] history, and psychology, amongst others, this book deals with some controversial subjects and deconstructs some of the received ideas about the recent and the long-gone past of Rwanda. About the author: Olivier Nyirubugara is a lecturer of New Media and Online Journalism at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication (Erasmus University Rotterdam). In 2011, he completed a PhD in Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam with a dissertation entitled Surfing the Past: Digital Learners in the History Class, in which he empirically explored ways in which pupils use the Web to find historical information. Nyirubugara has also been practicing journalism since 2002 and has been training and coaching journalists in mobile reporting in Africa since 2007.

Remembering Genocide

Remembering Genocide PDF

Author: Nigel Eltringham

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-06-27

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 1317754220

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In Remembering Genocide an international group of scholars draw on current research from a range of disciplines to explore how communities throughout the world remember genocide. Whether coming to terms with atrocities committed in Namibia and Rwanda, Australia, Canada, the Punjab, Armenia, Cambodia and during the Holocaust, those seeking to remember genocide are confronted with numerous challenges. Survivors grapple with the possibility, or even the desirability, of recalling painful memories. Societies where genocide has been perpetrated find it difficult to engage with an uncomfortable historical legacy. Still, to forget genocide, as this volume edited by Nigel Eltringham and Pam Maclean shows, is not an option. To do so reinforces the vulnerability of groups whose very existence remains in jeopardy and denies them the possibility of bringing perpetrators to justice. Contributors discuss how genocide is represented in media including literature, memorial books, film and audiovisual testimony. Debates surrounding the role museums and monuments play in constructing and transmitting memory are highlighted. Finally, authors engage with controversies arising from attempts to mobilise and manipulate memory in the service of reconciliation, compensation and transitional justice.

We Cannot Forget

We Cannot Forget PDF

Author: Samuel Totten

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 0813549698

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During a one-hundred-day period in 1994, Hutus murdered between half a million and a million Tutsi in Rwanda. The numbers are staggering; the methods of killing were unspeakable. Utilizing personal interviews with trauma survivors living in Rwandan cities, towns, and dusty villages, We Cannot Forget relates what happened during this period and what their lives were like both prior to and following the genocide. Through powerful stories that are at once memorable, disturbing, and informative, readers gain a critical sense of the tensions and violence that preceded the genocide, how it erupted and was carried out, and what these people faced in the first sixteen years following the genocide.

Deogratias, A Tale of Rwanda

Deogratias, A Tale of Rwanda PDF

Author: J.P. Stassen

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2006-05-02

Total Pages: 108

ISBN-13: 9781596431034

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Deogratias is just a boy. Benina is just a girl. Teenagers just like teenagers everywhere. Only he is a Hutu, and she is a Tutsiso say their ID cards.We are in Rwanda in the days leading to a swift and gruesome genocide which the world will watch but do nothing to stop. In less than a hundred days, eight hundred thousand human beings will be hacked to death.Moment by moment, piece by piece, J.P. Stassen skillfully builds a masterpiece, an unforgettable tale that probes mans inhumanity to man. His eloquence, his storytelling power, and his sheer poetry elevate this harrowing story to the rank of a testimonial to one of the darkest chapters in recent human history.With great skill and understanding, Stassens Deogratias takes us back and forth in time, showing only before and after the killings and inexorably revealing the grip of madness and horror on one young boy and his country.Difficult, beautiful, honest, and heartbreaking, this is a masterwork by a major artist of our time.

Genocide Lives in Us

Genocide Lives in Us PDF

Author: Jennie E. Burnet

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres

Published: 2012-11-19

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0299286436

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In the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, Rwandan women faced the impossible—resurrecting their lives amidst unthinkable devastation. Haunted by memories of lost loved ones and of their own experiences of violence, women rebuilt their lives from “less than nothing.” Neither passive victims nor innate peacemakers, they traversed dangerous emotional and political terrain to emerge as leaders in Rwanda today. This clear and engaging ethnography of survival tackles three interrelated phenomena—memory, silence, and justice—and probes the contradictory roles women played in postgenocide reconciliation. Based on more than a decade of intensive fieldwork, Genocide Lives in Us provides a unique grassroots perspective on a postconflict society. Anthropologist Jennie E. Burnet relates with sensitivity the heart-wrenching survival stories of ordinary Rwandan women and uncovers political and historical themes in their personal narratives. She shows that women’s leading role in Rwanda’s renaissance resulted from several factors: the dire postgenocide situation that forced women into new roles; advocacy by the Rwandan women’s movement; and the inclusion of women in the postgenocide government. Honorable Mention, Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize, Women’s Caucus of the African Studies Association

Memory and Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda

Memory and Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda PDF

Author: Timothy Longman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-07-13

Total Pages: 389

ISBN-13: 110824050X

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Following times of great conflict and tragedy, many countries implement programs and policies of transitional justice, none more extensive than in post-genocide Rwanda. Placing Rwanda's transitional justice initiatives in their historical and political context, this book examines the project undertaken by the post-genocide government to shape the collective memory of the Rwandan population, both through political and judicial reforms but also in public commemorations and memorials. Drawing on over two decades of field research in Rwanda, Longman uses surveys and comparative local case studies to explore Rwanda's response both at a governmental and local level. He argues that despite good intentions and important innovations, Rwanda's authoritarian political context has hindered the ability of transnational justice to bring the radical social and political transformations that its advocates hoped. Moreover, it continues to heighten the political and economic inequalities that underline ethnic divisions and are an important ongoing barrier to reconciliation.

From Genocide to Generosity

From Genocide to Generosity PDF

Author: John Steward

Publisher: Langham Publishing

Published: 2015-06-14

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1783680555

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Throwing caution to the wind at a dangerous time, John Steward gathered a handful of Rwandans and together they dreamed of ways to heal the wounds of genocide and war. The vibrancy of this group drew others into a radical circle for change which silently spread outwards. John made 19 return visits to Rwanda to support and mentor these local warriors for peace. Now he reveals an inspiring story of some of the dozens of people who are being transformed from haters to healers, from bringers of violence to makers of peace.

Art from Trauma

Art from Trauma PDF

Author: Rangira Béa Gallimore

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2019-08

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 1496215818

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What is the role of aesthetic expression in responding to discrimination, tragedy, violence, even genocide? How does gender shape responses to both literal and structural violence, including implicit linguistic, familial, and cultural violence? How might writing or other works of art contribute to healing? Art from Trauma: Genocide and Healing beyond Rwanda explores the possibility of art as therapeutic, capable of implementation by mental health practitioners crafting mental health policy in Rwanda. This anthology of scholarly, personal, and hybrid essays was inspired by scholar and activist Chantal Kalisa (1965–2015). At the commemoration of the nineteenth anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, organized by the Rwandan Embassy in Washington DC, Kalisa gave a presentation, “Who Speaks for the Survivors of the Genocide against Tutsi?” Kalisa devoted her energy to giving expression to those whose voices had been distorted or silenced. The essays in this anthology address how the production and experience of visual, dramatic, cinematic, and musical arts, in addition to literary arts, contribute to healing from the trauma of mass violence, offering preliminary responses to questions like Kalisa’s and honoring her by continuing the dialogue in which she participated with such passion, sharing the work of scholars and colleagues in genocide studies, gender studies, and francophone literatures.