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After Genocide
Memory and Reconciliation in Rwanda
Nicole Fox
Critical Human Rights
Scott Straus and Tyrell Haberkorn, Series Editors; Steve J. Stern, Editor Emeritus
ASC Division on Feminist Criminology's Outstanding Book Award Winner
ASA Section for Peace, War and Social Conflict's Outstanding Book Award Honorable Mention
“Powerful. Fox’s findings—including that the more mundane, everyday interactions are a more meaningful component of reconciliation—make beautiful and important contributions to the literature on peacebuilding and transitional justice, and have critical implications for international actors and policymakers.”
—Marie E. Berry, author of War, Women, and Power: From Violence to Mobilization in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
In the wake of unthinkable atrocities, it is reasonable to ask how any population can move on from the experience of genocide. Simply remembering the past can, in the shadow of mass death, be retraumatizing. So how can such momentous events be memorialized in a way that is productive and even healing for survivors? Genocide memorials tell a story about the past, preserve evidence of the violence that occurred, and provide emotional support to survivors. But the goal of amplifying survivors’ voices can fade amid larger narratives entrenched in political motivations.
In After Genocide, Nicole Fox investigates the ways memorials can shape the experiences of survivors decades after mass violence has ended. She examines how memorializations can both heal and hurt, especially when they fail to represent all genders, ethnicities, and classes of those afflicted. Drawing on extensive interviews with Rwandans, Fox reveals their relationships to these spaces and uncovers those voices silenced by the dominant narrative—arguing that the erasure of such stories is an act of violence itself. The book probes the ongoing question of how to fit survivors in to the dominant narrative of healing and importantly demonstrates how memorials can shape possibilities for growth, national cohesion, reconciliation, and hope for the future.
Nicole Fox is an associate professor of criminal justice at California State University Sacramento.
Praise
“After Genocide is a must-read for criminologists, cultural sociologists, and transitional justice scholars. Engaging and innovative, it entails crucial lessons on conditions of memorialization—its intensity, selectivity, and gendered nature—and its effects on peace.”
—Joachim Savelsberg, University of Minnesota
“Essential for anyone interested in collective memory, violence, and social justice. Fox’s careful, in-depth fieldwork results in a rich understanding of how Rwandans remember and narrate their pasts, and her brilliant concept of stratified collective memory powerfully illustrates how some peoples’ memories become privileged while others’ memories are marginalized.”
—Hollie Nyseth Brehm, The Ohio State University
“Invites a discussion into the politics of naming, narrativity, and marginality associated with collective memory, and how they inform transitional justice and reconciliation efforts. . . . A valuable addition to the fields of peace and conflict studies, sociology, criminology, and transitional justice.”
—Peace & Change
“A timely and important analysis of an under-studied aspect of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. . . . Offering rich insights and original thinking based on voluminous primary research, Fox's book is to be highly commended for addressing a critical area on contemporary Rwanda. . . . An exceptionally worthwhile read.”
—H-Net Reviews
“Eloquent, rigorous, precise, and enjoyable to read despite the heaviness of the topic. The reader feels Fox’s empathy toward her respondents and commitment to a feminist form of justice through her writing. . . . A nuanced text that paints a complex picture of reconciliation and women’s empowerment in Rwanda.”
—International Feminist Journal of Politics
“Fox brilliantly accomplishes in After Genocide what we typically expect multiple studies to do in
concert. . . . [She] skillfully weaves together depictions of the phenomenal and the quotidian of community memorial sites, scenes of public courage, anger, and outcry, and the hidden shame that shrouds women’s reconciliation journeys with an analysis of how formulaic approaches to reconciliation overlook the enduring pain and traumas that define survivors’ everyday lives. . . . The ways in which Fox moves through the unscripted arenas of field research to a rigorous and richly theorized account of life in the long aftermath of genocide is exemplary, offering an authoritative model for students of ethnography in conflictual and post-conflictual fields.”
—The Journal of Social Encounters
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