Expressing Memory after Genocide

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 6 builds on the previous chapter to provide concrete examples of this reward and punishment approach to enforcing the official narrative in the first 20 years after the genocide. It examines how three individual artists emerged as prominent Champions, Antagonists, and Fatalists, respectively. One of them, Kizito Mihigo, was a genocide survivor who became an Antagonist, while Edouard Bamporiki—who identified as being from a radical Hutu family—became a Champion. Dorcy Rugamba’s artistic output categorized him as a Fatalist, speaking to both local and diaspora communities and to international audiences without capitalizing on genocide memory to pronounce a political position in support or against the hegemonic master narrative. This chapter brings a much-needed analysis of artists and art to memory studies, where such analyses have been historically neglected. It develops a nuanced discussion of postgenocide Rwanda to show that when it comes to youth, who are the majority in the country, it is not about their identity backgrounds. Instead, there are many other economic, social, and political factors that inform one’s position as a Champion, Antagonist, or Fatalist, and that can shift one’s position over time. This discussion contributes to growing debates in memory studies that challenge the concepts of perpetrators, survivors, and bystanders as fixed categories that explain people’s relationship to mass violence. It also contributes to the evolving literature on intergenerational memory politics in the digital age.