Gender, narrative and affect: Top-down politics of commemoration in post-genocide Rwanda

Abstract

This article takes an interest in gendered memory politics and addresses the dearth of research on gender and commemoration in relation to the genocide in Rwanda. It analyses elite-produced gendered narratives at key sites of commemoration and investigates their affective role in constituting the post-genocide Rwandan state. Through a methodological approach of ‘the situated gaze’, three central observations are made. First, women are mourned as a specific category of rape victims and mothers. Second, women’s experiences of sexual violence are at the same time censored and de-individualized. Third, no other experiences, beyond being a victim, are taken into account. The article finds that the top-down affective memory politics circumscribes the role women played during and after the genocide, and restricts their agency within the present state project of ‘national unity and reconciliation’.