Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Murambi is Not Auschwitz: The Holocaust in Representations of the Rwandan Genocide

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Replicating Atonement

Part of the book series: Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies ((PMMS))

Abstract

Wosińska offers a critical reflection on the uses of Holocaust representations in non-European contexts. Focusing on memorial sites established after the Rwandan genocide of 1994, this chapter draws and discusses the politics behind the borrowing of Shoah commemoration by Paul Kagame’s ruling party in the process of creating official commemorative practices and sites, exemplified here by the Kigali Memorial Centre. Drawing on anthropological fieldwork, Wosińska confronts those official Rwandan representations of the Tutsi Genocide with local, grassroots memorial sites, exemplified by the Murambi Memorial Site. In exposing unburied and unidentified dead bodies beyond ethnic and national attributions, such local counter-memorials, instead of borrowing from post-Holocaust identity, construct emancipatory narratives. The chapter concludes with a psychoanalytical reflection on the meaning of autonomy in the processes of mourning.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Adelman, Howard, and Astrid Suhrke (eds.). 2000. The Path of a Genocide: The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ankersmit, Frank. 2001. Historical Representation. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bruneteau, Bernard. 2005. Wiek ludobójstwa. Tłum.: Beata Spieralska. Warszawa: Mówią Wieki [French original: Le Siècle des génocides: Violences, massacres et processus génocidaires de l’Arménie au Rwanda, Paris: Armand Colin, 2004].

    Google Scholar 

  • Des Forges, Alison. 2007. Call to Genocide: Radio in Rwanda 1994. In The Media and the Rwanda Genocide, ed. Allan Thompson, 41–54. London and Ann Arbor: Pluto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Domańska, Ewa. 2006. Historie Niekonwencjonalne. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gebert, Konstanty. 2009. “Murambi naprawdę istnieje.” Polityka 2705, May 16.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goldhagen, Daniel. 2009. Worse Than War. Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity. New York: Public Affairs.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hatzfeld, Jean. 2006. Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak, trans. Linda Coverdale. New York: Picador [French original: Une saison de machettes. Paris: Le Seuil, 2003].

    Google Scholar 

  • Hirsch, Mariann. 2001. Surviving Images: Holocaust Photographs and the Work of Postmemory. In Visual Culture and the Holocaust, ed. Barbie Zelizer, 215–246. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hirsch, Marianne. 2012. Objects of Return. In: After Testimony: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Holocaust Narrative for the Future, ed. Jakob Lothe, Susan Rubin Suleiman, and James Phelan, 198–220. The Ohio State University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jessee, Erin Denise. 2003. Exhuming Conflict. M.A. thesis, Simon Fraser University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Karega-Munene. 2011. Museums in Kenya: Spaces for Selecting, Ordering and Erasing Memories of Identity and Nationhood. In Heritage, History and Memory: New Research from East and Southern Africa. August 2011 special issue of African Studies 70 (2): 224–245.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaźmierska, Kaja. 2008. Biografia i pamięć. Na przykładzie pokoleniowego doświadczenia ocalonych z Zagłady. Kraków: Nomos [English translation: Biography and Memory. The Generational Experience of the Shoah Survivors]. Brighton, MA: Academic Studies.

    Google Scholar 

  • Klein, M. (1940). Mourning and its Relation to Manic-Depressive States. International Journal Psycho Analaysis 21: 125–153. Copyright © 2009, Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kopytoff, Igo. 1986. The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process. In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai, 64–94. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Kuperman, Alan J. 2001. The Limits of Humanitarian Military Intervention: Genocide in Rwanda. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.

    Google Scholar 

  • LaCapra, Dominick. 2004. History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lamerchand, René. 2009. The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Levi, Primo. 2007. Pogrążeni i ocaleni. Tłum.: Stanisław Kasprzysiak. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie [Italian original: I sommersi e i salvati, Torino: Einaudi, 1986. English translation: The Drowned and the Saved. Translated from the Italian by Raymond Rosenthal. New York: Vintage International].

    Google Scholar 

  • Lis-Turlejska, Maja. 2005. Traumatyczne zdarzenia i ich skutki psychiczne. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Psychologii PAN.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lugan, Bernard. 1997. Histoire du Rwanda: de la préhistoire à nos jours. Paris: Bartillat.

    Google Scholar 

  • Midlarsky, Manus. 2005. The Killing Trap. Genocide in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mugiraneza, Assumpta. 2009. Les écueils dans l’appréhension de l’histoire du génocide des Tutsi. Revue d’histoire de la Shoah 190: 153–172.

    Google Scholar 

  • Newman, Leonard S., and Ralph Erber (eds.). 2002. Understanding Genocide. The Social Psychology of the Holocaust. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nora, Pierre. 1989. Representations 26: 7–24. Spring.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prunier, Gérard. 1997. The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide, Expanded ed. London: C. Hurst.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prunier, Gérard. 2009. From Genocide to Continental War. The Congolese Conflict and the Crisis of Contemporary Africa. London: C. Hurst.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, and Philippe Bourgois (eds.). 2003. Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shklar, Judith. 1989. The Liberalism of Fear. In Liberalism and the Moral Life, ed. Nancy L. Rosenblum, 21–38. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stone, Dan. 2004. Genocide as Transgression. European Journal of Social Theory 7 (1): 45–65.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Symington, Neville. 1996. Mimesis in Narcissistic Patients. The Making of a Psychotherapist, 116–127. London: Karnac Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Szpociński, Andrzej. 2003. Miejsca pamięci. Borussia. Kultura—Historia—Literatura 13 (29): 17–23.

    Google Scholar 

  • Uvin, Peter. 1998. Aiding Violence. The Development Enterprise in Rwanda. West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Young, James E. 1993. The Texture of Memory. Holocaust Memorials and Meaning. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ziębińska-Witek, Anna. 2011. Historia w muzeach. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej: Studium ekspozycji Holokaustu. Lublin.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland

    Małgorzata Wosińska

Authors
  1. Małgorzata Wosińska
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Małgorzata Wosińska .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Einstein Forum, Potsdam, Germany

    Mischa Gabowitsch

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Wosińska, M. (2017). Murambi is Not Auschwitz: The Holocaust in Representations of the Rwandan Genocide. In: Gabowitsch, M. (eds) Replicating Atonement . Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65027-2_8

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation