Abstract
The Rwandan genocide, seen as the result of years of ethnic antagonization and segmentation, was followed by a political effort leading to the restructuration of Rwandan national identity in order to unify the society and eventually achieve national reconciliation. By implementing measures such as the removal of ethnic affiliation on national identity documents, or by reforming the national education curriculum, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RFP), governing the country since 1994 under the leadership of the President Paul Kagame, aimed at the progressive obliteration of the ethnic frame of references in the Rwandan society. Therefore, the aim of this study is to analyze the dynamics of obliteration of the ethnic factor in the Rwandan state narrative and to study, under a multidimensional lens, the post-genocide nation-building processes. Key words: Ethnicity, ethnic denialism, genocide, nation building, civic transition.
Highlights
INTRODUCTIONThe study of the causes of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, that led to between 800000 and a million victims, has been subjected to a memory war, a conflict between opposed interpretations of historical events and dynamics
The study of the causes of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, that led to between 800000 and a million victims, has been subjected to a memory war, a conflict between opposed interpretations of historical events and dynamics. This memory war tackles the immediate causes of the genocide, it is to say the death of the Hutu president Habyarimana in 1994, and the more profound sources of ethnic segmentation in Rwanda and Burundi
Rwandan state that became a champion of ethnic denial emphasizing the colonial impact on ethnic segmentation and its absence prior to colonialism
Summary
The study of the causes of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, that led to between 800000 and a million victims, has been subjected to a memory war, a conflict between opposed interpretations of historical events and dynamics. According to historian King (2013), the postgenocide Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR) state will propel a theory of the precolonial golden age in which ethnic conflicts were absent This theory of precolonial golden age was reinforced by the work of scholars such as Christian (2010) that highlighted the peculiarity of ethnicity of Rwanda since patrilinear and hereditary identifications do not correspond with a linguistic, cultural or geographic differentiation. Most of the literature evoking the Rwandan case emphasizes the genocide shift and the construction of a civic identity disconnected from ethnic belonging, notably with a comparison with Burundi that has adopted ethnic accommodation measures. Most of these works adopted a unidimensional socio-political approach, without examining the historiographical and educational features. The goal was to connect historiography, political sociology, economy and social psychology to reveal trends inherent to nation-building, collective trauma, collective motivation by economic incentives or paternalistic politics crisscrossing and forming the peculiarity of the Rwandan case
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