Commemoration of Human Remains in Rwanda as an Emancipatory Strategy against the Holocaust Discourse

Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11:30 AM at Einstein Forum in Potsdam
Małgorzata Wosińska, Warsaw

As a Polish researcher of Jewish descent who has worked in spaces of conflict and post-conflict (Rwanda, Congo, Uganda, Lithuania, Ukraine), I attempt to move beyond the representational paradigm in genocide studies, addressing in my research, for example, the subjectivity and agency of dead bodies and human remains. Rwanda can be considered a special case here since it is a land of thousands of pieces of material evidence of crime (buried and unburied bodies, personal belongings left in 1994, abandoned houses). Both memory and sites of mass murder undergo complicated processes of colonization and decolonization. My research on the identity of the 1994 genocide survivors indicates that the memory of the Holocaust and the resultant visual and literary representations have played a constitutive role for Rwandan perspectives on the country’s own experience. In Rwanda there is a stark contrast between narrative museums, organised in line with the Western tradition of arranging exhibitions, and mass graves: places of memory, such as Murambi, that emerge as spontaneous grassroots initiatives. What can the remains of the Rwanda genocide victims teach us? Is it possible that their lesson may be emancipatory, liberating us from the domination of Holocaust discourse?

Małgorzata Wosińska is a genocide anthropologist and psychotraumatologist. She holds a PhD from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and works as a senior lecturer of the NOHA Network on Humanitarian Action at the Faculty of Law and Administration, University of Warsaw, Poland. Her research interests range from critical Holocaust and genocide studies to museum and forensic studies.

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