Paper short abstract:

From a transnational point of view, this paper aims to discuss the relationships between a vernacular understanding of the Rwandan recent past that implies the fulfilment of a prophecy and the official memory of the genocide, expressed in time and space by commemorating ceremonies and memorials.

Paper long abstract:

It is today widely accepted amongst Rwandan Catholics that the Virgin Mary appeared in the country from the beginning of the eighties to warn her people about the civil war and the genocide to come. According to that specific set of religious representations, Rwandan recent past is understood as the course of a unique fate resulting from the lack of regard for the divine message. Therefore, each Rwandan, regardless of the ethnic group he belonged to before 1994, is guilty for not going through a genuine conversion after the warning of 1982. Nevertheless, he is also a victim, since "even the killers are traumatized by their own actions". That generalizing vernacular notion of the national past faces the official memory of the genocide, expressed in time and space by annual commemorating ceremonies and numerous memorials throughout the country, and resting on a specific view of the pre-colonial, colonial and early post-colonial time. Scholars such as Vidal and Segelin have shown how that official memory is politically oriented and perpetuates violence by mobilizing private grieves for national purposes and instituting a hierarchy amongst victims. By focalizing on notions such as nation building and post-conflictual reconstruction, this paper aims to discuss the polymorphic relationships between these two modalities of historical consciousness, and the methodological problems related to that issue. It will do so from a transnational point of view, building on the result of several years of fieldwork in Rwanda and in the Rwandan Diaspora in Belgium.