Representing Rwanda: Questions and Challenges

Abstract

While members of the Rwandan political élite, both in power and in exile, do not deny that the 1994 genocide occurred, there are significant differences in how they explain its cause, and the degree of context they consider necessary for a ‘true’ representation of the conflict to emerge. Despite this, recent journalistic works on Rwanda present a monovocal, ‘factual’ narrative about the genocide. While such narratives are clearly attractive to a wider readership, anthropology’s concern to give voice to competing representations as a cause, rather than subsidiary feature of conflict places researchers in a sensitive and difficult position. To what extent do anthropological treatments of conflict necessarily oppose such ‘factual’ narratives, or can they be regarded as complementary?