Personal Narrative In Rwanda

April to July 1994 marked the Rwandan genocide, a period of mass slaughter by the Hutu majority government of the Tutsi's and the moderate Hutu's. As it only happened recently, many of the current population have both first hand experiences of the conflict and experienced extensive sexual violence that came with it. Yet, despite this, Rwanda managed to achieve 'peace' with its political and economic turn around (Naftalin, 2011:22). Rwanda has not fallen into another inter-ethnic conflict and is one of the main countries that has a majority of women in the government (The Economist, 2017). Rebuilding a country after such an event requires both political strength and an effective way of dealing with the past. Commemoration and a constructive

Personal narrative is one that comes forth from one's own interpretation of a particular experience. There is a debate to what extent the individual experience influences the dominant narrative and to what extent the dominant narrative influences the personal narrative (Ashplant, 14). However, the main point to take from this is that the state narrative does not necessarily reflect every aspect of the event. There are other views that can mark the main narrative. In other words, the state narrative can only reflect certain types of personal narratives. When a particular kind of personal narrative is accepted, this can lead to a binary view on the event in the main narrative, identifying certain people as solely good or solely bad and failing to encompass the complexities and the 'grey' areas of the

For instance, Jay Winter would argue that there is too much focus on the state in organising commemoration and not enough focus on ordinary people (Winter, 60 – L3 40 check!). In addition, others scholars argue that remembering is a reflection of society and does not construct 'subjective meaning' (Ashplant, 33). This is a relevant point to keep in mind, yet to give limited credit to the state in its influence on the narrative, would deny the 'gaps' in the narrative. This is especially the case with Rwandan's questionable moral government (Reyntjens, 2004; The Economist). Moreover, it 'neglects the facts that individual subjects come to identify their experiences through the pre-exisitng narratives fashioned by the agencies of the nation-state...' (Ashplant, 33). The state-narrative then definitely has a crucial influence. It might not reflect all the opinions in Rwanda, yet it does set forth a certain kind of identity. This state governed identity is not allowed to be questioned as that might be seen as 'genocide ideology' (The economist;