{"title":"调解卢旺达种族灭绝纪念馆的“缺席”:照顾,记忆和接近死者","authors":"Julia Viebach","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2019.1707100","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This paper analyses the connectivities between violence, memory, personhood, place and human substances after the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. It explores the practice of ‘care-taking’ at genocide memorials – the preservation and care of human remains – to reveal how survivors of the Genocide remake their worlds through working with the remnants of their dead loved ones. I argue that ‘care-taking’ is a way to rebuild selves and to retain lost relations to the dead that still interfere in the everyday lives of the living. Survivors project their emotions, sentiments and confusion about an uncertain future onto the remains. Care-taking re-verses time because it gives back dignity to those who died ‘bad deaths’ during the Genocide. I further argue that the memorials are a vehicle for what I coin ‘place-bound proximity’ that enables a material space of communication between care-takers and their dead loved ones, provides a last resting place and a ‘home’ for both the living and the dead. Following a ‘victim-approach’ this paper draws on extensive fieldwork conducted in Rwanda since 2011.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3000,"publicationDate":"2020-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"Mediating ‘absence-presence’ at Rwanda’s genocide memorials: of care-taking, memory and proximity to the dead\",\"authors\":\"Julia Viebach\",\"doi\":\"10.1080/21681392.2019.1707100\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"This paper analyses the connectivities between violence, memory, personhood, place and human substances after the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. It explores the practice of ‘care-taking’ at genocide memorials – the preservation and care of human remains – to reveal how survivors of the Genocide remake their worlds through working with the remnants of their dead loved ones. I argue that ‘care-taking’ is a way to rebuild selves and to retain lost relations to the dead that still interfere in the everyday lives of the living. Survivors project their emotions, sentiments and confusion about an uncertain future onto the remains. Care-taking re-verses time because it gives back dignity to those who died ‘bad deaths’ during the Genocide. I further argue that the memorials are a vehicle for what I coin ‘place-bound proximity’ that enables a material space of communication between care-takers and their dead loved ones, provides a last resting place and a ‘home’ for both the living and the dead. Following a ‘victim-approach’ this paper draws on extensive fieldwork conducted in Rwanda since 2011.\",\"PeriodicalId\":37966,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Critical African Studies\",\"volume\":null,\"pages\":null},\"PeriodicalIF\":1.3000,\"publicationDate\":\"2020-01-16\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"1\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Critical African Studies\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"1085\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2019.1707100\",\"RegionNum\":0,\"RegionCategory\":null,\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"Q2\",\"JCRName\":\"ANTHROPOLOGY\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Critical African Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2019.1707100","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
Mediating ‘absence-presence’ at Rwanda’s genocide memorials: of care-taking, memory and proximity to the dead
This paper analyses the connectivities between violence, memory, personhood, place and human substances after the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. It explores the practice of ‘care-taking’ at genocide memorials – the preservation and care of human remains – to reveal how survivors of the Genocide remake their worlds through working with the remnants of their dead loved ones. I argue that ‘care-taking’ is a way to rebuild selves and to retain lost relations to the dead that still interfere in the everyday lives of the living. Survivors project their emotions, sentiments and confusion about an uncertain future onto the remains. Care-taking re-verses time because it gives back dignity to those who died ‘bad deaths’ during the Genocide. I further argue that the memorials are a vehicle for what I coin ‘place-bound proximity’ that enables a material space of communication between care-takers and their dead loved ones, provides a last resting place and a ‘home’ for both the living and the dead. Following a ‘victim-approach’ this paper draws on extensive fieldwork conducted in Rwanda since 2011.
期刊介绍:
Critical African Studies seeks to return Africanist scholarship to the heart of theoretical innovation within each of its constituent disciplines, including Anthropology, Political Science, Sociology, History, Law and Economics. We offer authors a more flexible publishing platform than other journals, allowing them greater space to develop empirical discussions alongside theoretical and conceptual engagements. We aim to publish scholarly articles that offer both innovative empirical contributions, grounded in original fieldwork, and also innovative theoretical engagements. This speaks to our broader intention to promote the deployment of thorough empirical work for the purposes of sophisticated theoretical innovation. We invite contributions that meet the aims of the journal, including special issue proposals that offer fresh empirical and theoretical insights into African Studies debates.