Peaceful Selves : : Personhood, Nationhood, and the Post-Conflict Moment in Rwanda / / Laura Eramian.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Berghahn Books Complete eBook-Package 2017
• VerfasserIn: Eramian, Laura,
• Place / Publishing House: New York; , Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2017]; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (202 p.)

This ethnography of personhood in post-genocide Rwanda investigates how residents of a small town grapple with what kinds of persons they ought to become in the wake of violence. Based on fieldwork carried out over the course of a decade, it uncovers how conflicting moral demands emerge from the 1994 genocide, from cultural contradictions around “good” personhood, and from both state and popular visions for the future. What emerges is a profound dissonance in town residents’ selfhood. While they strive to be agents of change who can catalyze a new era of modern Rwandan nationhood, they are also devastated by the genocide and struggle to recover a sense of selfhood and belonging in the absence of kin, friends, and neighbors. In drawing out the contradictions at the heart of self-making and social life in contemporary Rwanda, this book asserts a novel argument about the ordinary lives caught in global post-conflict imperatives to remember and to forget, to mourn and to prosper.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction: Person, Nation, and Violence in Rwanda -- 1. The Post-Conflict Moment in Butare and Its Antecedents -- 2. Ethnicity’s Specter in Post-Ethnic Times -- 3. Living with Absence -- 4. Creativity, Positive Thinking, and Their Perils -- 5. Making Peace by Remaking Persons -- Conclusion: The Post-Conflict, the Postcolonial, and Peaceful Selves -- Glossary of Kinyarwanda terms -- Bibliography -- Index