As White Perpetrator Remembers: Prosthetic Memory Construction with Redemption in Rwandan Genocide Films

Abstract

The regional dominance struggles of the states after the cold war and the civil wars that broke out in the world often evolved into ethnic cleansing. Rwanda, which has been under the domination of many different colonial Powers in the historical process of Africa, is witnessing a new process of changing hands of international hegemony after the cold war as a result of the civil war and the genocide process after 1990. After the massacres in Rwanda, the directors transformed the country into a huge film plateau, both thematically and spatially. In this universe where there are no Rwandan directors, the testimony of the genocide attempts in the country is carried out through Western film directors. While the events in Rwanda are divided into those who support Hutu and Tutsi and those who do not, the genocide attempt is told on the basis of redemption where international powers accuse each other and acquit themselves. Hotel Rwanda (Terry George, 2004), Shooting Dogs (Michael Caton-Jones, 2005), Sometimes in April (Raoul Peck ,2005), Un dimanche à Kigali/ A Sunday in Kigali (Robert Favreau, 2006) and Shake Hands with the Devil (Peter Raymont, 2007) films with a structuralist approach, concepts such as redemption, white agent, and purification in relation to the concept of prosthetic memory undertaken by the films will also be discussed. It is seen that redemption is at the center of the narrative in Rwandan films, and it functions as a cathartic element of the Western perpetrator.