Paper short abstract:

Completing a doctoral research about the history of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda through the analysis of the local trials, I was led to work with the witnesses of this traumatic event. During my fieldwork, I was confronted to the violence of the memories and compelled to question the relation I had with the witnesses. This question was different from a category of witness to another. Indeed, I conducted biographical interviews with perpetrators as well as with survivors. In both cases, this relation raised three dimensions: the research of historical facts, the way the witnesses modeled the representations of the past and the “ethnographical relation” created by the interview with a foreigner – above all French in this very specific context. One have to keep in mind that, here, were are not only a foreigner due to the nationality we have but also –and maybe above all – because we are confronted to an extreme experience.

Paper long abstract:

In this presentation, I would like to question the methodological tools a researcher can conceive to face with this very specific context where violence is still so present. How do you react when the person you are with is experiencing a traumatic breakdown? Could the researcher been considered as an agent of "traumatization"? Is this relation a kind of violation of the witness intimacy? Which kind of back-effects this living apprehension of the violence could have on the researcher himself? In reference to Michael Pollack's work on the testimony of the Holocaust survivors, we would like to question the conditions of possibility, which allow the Rwandan survivors' narratives. This issue will also be addressed from the survivors' point of view. What do they think about their testimonial experience? How did they understand the research they were participating in? I will try to answer these questions by exposing the way I worked in Rwanda, through empirical examples.

I will follow my reflection by questioning the relation with the perpetrators, especially when the interviews occurred in the prison environment. First, as we have attended the trial, we are aware of the accusations, sometimes confessed crimes of the prisoner. Then, our status of foreigner is always a bargaining stake to obtain some favors in order to improve the daily life in jail. We are in a strategic relation to obtain information, when the witness is trying to build a morally acceptable image of him. These questions will be enlightened through empirical examples drawn from my fieldwork in Rwandan jails.