Talk by Roger Bromley, Emeritus Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Nottingham
Seminar abstract
When does mourning end, and where/how does forgiveness begin? Screening Narratives of Hope in Rwanda
With the twentieth anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda having taken place last year, it is perhaps time to reflect further on the progress made towards peace and reconciliation. In the years since 1994, the reconciliation process has involved the establishment of a National Unity and Reconciliation Commission(NURC), numerous workshops, re-education camps for former perpetrators,as well as a proliferation of monuments, museums, memorials, national commemoration days, novels, documentary and feature films, and art installations.
While it is not possible to extrapolate from local and personal experiences an image of national reconciliation, many of the documentary films do at least offer instances of the conditions of possibility for forms of sustainable co-existence, if not total harmony, by showing examples of ways in which relationships between former adversaries are gradually being established and signs of mutuality constructed. Traces of the restorative are evident in many of the films, but at the same time they also demonstrate the levels of fear, anxiety, suspicion, hostility and intimidation which still prevail. Is reconciliation, as some claim, amnesty by default, or another form of the culture of impunity which, some have argued, was one of the root causes of the genocide? For the purpose of this seminar (and building upon arguments first developed in French Cultural Studies (2010)), I shall concentrate mainly on a small sample of documentary films based on themes of commemoration, justice, and forgiveness: Keepers of Memory, My Neighbor, My Killer, and As We Forgive.