Peaceful Selves Personhood, Nationhood, and the Post-Conflict Moment in Rwanda [Hardcover]

This ethnography of personhood in post-genocide Rwanda investigates how residents of a small town grapple with what kinds of persons they ought to become in the wake of violence. Based on fieldwork carried out over the course of a decade, it uncovers how conflicting moral demands emerge from the 1994 genocide, from cultural contradictions around good personhood, and from both state and popular visions for the future. What emerges is a profound dissonance in town residents selfhood. While they strive to be agents of change who can catalyze a new era of modern Rwandan nationhood, they are also devastated by the genocide and struggle to recover a sense of selfhood and belonging in the absence of kin, friends, and neighbors. In drawing out the contradictions at the heart of self-making and social life in contemporary Rwanda, this book asserts a novel argument about the ordinary lives caught in global post-conflict imperatives to remember and to forget, to mourn and to prosper.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations

Introduction:Person, Nation, and Violence in Rwanda

Chapter 1.The Post-Conflict Moment in Butare and its Antecedents
Chapter 2.Ethnicitys Specter in Post-Ethnic Times
Chapter 3.Living with Absence
Chapter 4.Creativity, Positive Thinking, and Their Perils
Chapter 5.Making Peace by Remaking Persons

Conclusion:The Post-conflict, the Postcolonial, and Peaceful Selves

Glossary
Bibliography
Index

This book presents a rich ethnography of urban life in Butare, Rwandas second biggest city and once its cultural centre, providing impressive new insights into everyday life in postgenocide Rwanda.? Susan Thomson, Colgate University

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