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Accepted Paper:
Com/Promises everywhere: Three ways to inhabit the future together
Stefanie Bognitz
(University of Johannesburg)
In this paper, I interrelate three anthropological instances to seek out people’s incentives for the making of compromises and the reliance on promises. There is a sense of an ethics of radical futurity at work in Rwanda, a way of seeing the other as companion human being.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, I interrelate three anthropological instances to seek out people’s incentives for the making of compromises and the reliance on promises. I put forth the assumption about com/promising as interactive force that ties into people's hopes never to return to, repeat or revisit the violence of the past and their promise to never again let happen any of the atrocious acts that had devastated, exiled or exterminated previous generations seeking a life in Rwanda. I accompany three persons who engage compromise and forge promises in their everyday lives. Not only do they sensibly measure their doings based on experience, they seek to chart an itinerary on how to live peacefully together as reliable humans. They ask for the possibility to lead meaningful lives when they have to move beyond law and its forceful institutions, in search for possibilities that can hold the future together. Moreover, there is a pressing urge and unconditional longing for the future. There is a sense of an ethics of radical futurity at work in a country with a more-than-difficult past and a more-than-contested present. This includes itineraries into a future beyond day-to-day disputing, a future of recognition, trustworthiness and truthfulness. Futurity surfaces in an ever-present ordinary ethic, a way of seeing the other for what a person is in the everyday existence as companion human being. In the seeking out of a common humanity, lies a desire to inhabit a temporality where everyone’s experiences exist in sync.