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Remembering to Forget: Chosen Amnesia as a Strategy for Local Coexistence in Post-Genocide Rwanda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2011

Susanne Buckley-Zistel
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Abstract

More than a decade after the genocide, Rwanda's local communities remain severely affected by the experience of the violence and horror. This is reflected in the way people remember their past, as well as in what they choose to forget. During fieldwork in Nyamata and Gikongoro it became apparent that even though the memory of the genocide as such, its pain and suffering, was essential for all interviewees, a clearer picture of the causes of the genocide had disappeared into oblivion. In this article I argue that this forgetting of pregenocide social cleavages reflects less a mental failure than a conscious coping mechanism. What I shall refer to as chosen amnesia, the deliberate eclipsing of particular memories, allows people to avoid antagonism and enables a degree of community cohesion necessary for the intimacy of rural life in Rwanda. While this is presently essential for local coexistence, it prevents the emergence of a critical challenge to the social cleavages that allowed the genocide to occur in the first place and impedes the social transformation necessary to render ethnicity-based violence impossible.

Résumé

Plus de dix ans après le génocide, les communautés locales du Rwanda restent profondément marquées par l'expérience de la violence et de l'horreur. On le voit dans la manière dont les Rwandais se remémorent leur passé, ainsi que dans ce qu'ils choisissent d'oublier. Dans le cadre de travaux de terrain menés à Nyamata et à Gikongoro, il s'est avéré que même si la mémoire du génocide en tant que tel, avec sa douleur et sa souffrance, était primordiale pour toutes les personnes interrogées, l'exposé précis des causes du génocide était tombé dans l'oubli. L'article affirme que l'oubli des clivages sociaux qui ont précédé le génocide est moins le reflet d'une déficience mentale que d'un mécanisme conscient de défense. Il décrit sous le terme d'amnésie voulue l'action délibérée d'occulter des souvenirs précis, qui selon lui permet d'éviter l'hostilité et rend possible un certain degré de cohésion communautaire nécessaire à l'intimité de la vie rurale au Rwanda. Bien qu'actuellement essentielle pour la coexistence locale, cette amnésie voulue empêche l'émergence d'une mise en question critique des clivages sociaux qui ont permis au génocide de se produire et gêne la transformation sociale nécessaire pour rendre impossible la violence ethnique.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 76 , Issue 2 , May 2006 , pp. 131 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2006

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