Trauma and Commemoration in Post-Genocide Rwanda

• In Event: 162 - Section on Peace, War and Social Conflict Paper Session. Wars and After Wars

Abstract

This paper examines how Rwanda genocide survivors understand trauma, how they conceptualize appropriate treatments for trauma, and how these understandings structure decisions about commemorating and constructing a collective memory. The narratives around traumatizing illuminate processes on two essential aspects of post-genocide life: collective memory and reconciliation. Participants in this study describe a specific psychological process called, “traumatizing,” that includes a crisis in which someone experiences a flashback from 1994 and believes people are trying to kill them. This experience can be contagious and is believed by some to be dangerous in crowded situations such as the annual commemorations. In the case of “traumatizing,” the manner in which survivors, commemoration staff and government employees perceive this psychological process, structures the type of narrative that becomes central, public and recognizable at national remembrance events and memorialization projects. Public narratives shared at the national level during commemorations are not only the ones survivors bear witness to; they are also observed by tourists (both high profile and not), televised and often transcribed or documented for years to come. Quite literally, the testimonies and material shared during commemoration events become a recorded history of Rwandan mnemonic practices and in some ways a recorded history of what occurred during those violent months in 1994.

Author

• Nicole Schuldberg Fox, Brandeis University