Mediating ‘absence-presence’ at Rwanda’s genocide memorials: of care-taking, memory and proximity to the dead

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.