Related References

California State University, Dominguez Hills
Created: June 5, 2001
Latest update: July 12, 2001
jeannecurran@habermas.org.

This essay is based on Philip Gourevitch's We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families. Picador USA, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, N.Y. 1998. ISBN: 0-312-24335-9 $15.00 at Vroman's in Pasadena.

Gourevitch brings up all the questions we've discussed on the process of violentization, on the meaning of such violence, on our fascination with it, on our moral obligation to understand it. "I presume that you are reading this because you desire a closer look, and that you, too, are properly disturbed by your curiosity. Perhaps, in examining this extermity with me, you hope for some understainding, some insight, some flicker of self-knowledge---a moral, or a loesson or a clue about how to behave in this world: some such information. I don't discount the possibility, but when it comes to genocide, you already know right from wrong. The best reason I have come up with for looking closely into Rwanda's stories is that ignoring them makes me even more uncomfortable about existence and my place in it. . . ." (At p. 19.)

Gourevitch tells in beginning about his encounter with a man who announces himself to be a pygmy. The pygmy expounds his principle of homo sapiens: "all humanity is one," in the author's words. The pygmy insists that he must marry a white woman, but cannot discover where to find one. Gourevitch starts with the story of the pygmy and then goes on into the stories from Rwanda. He tells us that he tells this story of the pygmy "because this is a book about how people imagine themselves and one another --- abook about how we imagine our world." "I wanted to know how Rwandans understood what had happend in their country, and how they were getting on in the aftermath. The word 'genocide' and the images of the nameless and numberless dead left too much to the imagination."

Discussion Topics:

1. Gourevitch tells us at p. 6:

   "In Rwanda a year before I met the pygmy, the government had adopted a new policy, according to which everyone in the country's Hutu majority group was called upon to murder everyone in the Tutsi minority. The government, and an astounding number of its subjects, imagined that by exterminating the Tutsi people they could make the world a better place, and the mass killing had followed."

   Imagine the scene between the pygmy and Philip Gourevitch. Assuming no language problem to bar communication, what would you say to the pygmy who tells you he must marry a white wife? To help you think this through, look to TR Young's concept of chaos theory - the theory of complexity. Look to Jonathan Lear's conception of knowingness in his re-interpretation of Freud. Recall that Jonathan Lear says that many feelings are translated directly into action, with no rational foundation. Consider the tension of conflicting feelings.
   jeanne's thoughts

   Gourevitch asked the pygmy why the color of his wife mattered. The pygmy simply repeated that he must not marry a Negro. Gourevitch thought the whole conversation was about the Hutus and the Tutsis, that the pygmy announced himself as a pygmy just to clarify that he was neither Hutu nor Tutsi. Gourevitch uses this conversation to emphasize that every substantive conversation in Rwanda stems from the genocide and its effect on people. Certainly the desire to marry a white wife could reflect a desire to remove oneself from that conflict.

   What would I say to the pygmy, in the interest of transforming discourse? That's a tough question. I don't think a lecture would go over too well in that setting. (They were in a bar.) I am thinking of Malika's comment, couldn't we just talk about truth and fairness? and leave genocide out of this? But I am also thinking that I am a white woman, like the woman from the Netherlands who had just left the bar. I need to avoid being considered a candidate for the pygmy's white wife. And I am thinking that we need to talk about these things that are not to be talked about. So maybe I like Malika's suggestion. Maybe a comment about truth and fairness? Maybe an agreement that the white woman might understand the pygmy's theory of homo sapiens, but would the white man who lived in the community with the white woman? And what would that mean to the white wife?

   My response and chaos theory:

   In Chaos theory and the Knowledge Process, TR Young quotes Steven Seidman (Scroll down about an inch.):

   "Once the veil of epistemic privilege is torn away, science appears as a social force enmeshed in particular cultures and power struggles. The claim to truth, as Foucault has proposed, is inextricably an act of power--a will to form humanity (1990-2)"

   I don't know how that would translate into a question for the pygmy, but I'd like to get him to talk about the power struggle behind what happened in Rwanda, who benefitted from it, and what whites had to do with the promulgation of these ideas. What was the act of power involved? Were the Hutus not providing the support the colonizers sought? Well, back to this later.

   My response and "knowingness":

   Jonathan Lear has spoken of our need to know. Our need to be certain. So when people identify someone, anyone, as the cause of our troubles, it is tempting to believe this simplistic answer. The Hutus and the Tutsis were willing at different times in different locales, to believe that they were enemies of each other, even though there is no real difference between them. The simplification and blaming that lead us to believe that everything is someone's fault makes it easy for us to hate, especially when we are encouraged by mass action. That mass action may even take place from within the group itself, since the Hutus and the Tutsis have been shown not to be different groups. (I need to add a citation here - but not now. Nag me. jeanne)

2. Consider the process of violentization. Gourevitch tells us that most of the dead were killed with machetes, often tortured. Not quick and easy work. How did they come to be so capable of violent killing? How did they inure themselves to the cries of agony? Think of the killings in these terms.

   Gourevitch tells us at p. 17:

   "A few weeks earlier, in Bukavu, Zaire, in the giant market of a refugee camp that was home to many Rwandan Hutu militiamen, I had watched a man butchering a cow with a machete. He was quite expert at his work, taking big precise strokes that made a sharp hacking noise. The rallying cry to the killers during the genocide was 'Do your work!' And I saw that it was work, this butchery; hard work. It took many hacks---two, three, four, five hard hacks---to chop through the cow's leg. How many hacks to dismember a person?"

   jeanne's thoughts

   I have no idea how many hacks to dismember a person, but I do understand what Gourevitch is saying. It's bloody ugly, and not many of us could stomach it. How do we get to the point that we can stomach it? A question frequently asked in considering the deeds of virulent criminals. Why They Kill, Rhodes work on Lonnie Athens' research on violence deals with the process of violentization.

   I haven't the time or energy just now, but we'll discuss this in class this Fall. We should be able to find examples in the stories of the violentization process of which Athens speaks. Nag me. jeanne July 12, 2001.

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Related References:

Rwanda: Update to End of February 1998 (March 1998) By Gérard Prunier – WRITENET.

Belgian Court Tries 4 in Rwandan Convent Massacre By Marlise Simons. One of the four was a Mother Superior in the Convent. backup

Belgian Jury Convicts 4 of 1994 War Crimes in Rwanda By Marlise Simons. backup

Nuns' Conviction 'Surprises' Vatican By The Associated Press. backup

Organizational foundations of genocide The Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict. Scroll down to No.4.

"At the Derry conference, Prunier characterized Rwanda as the "Prussia of Africa," a state with recent history of centralization of power and a population habituated in obedience to state authority. He described how the identities of Tutsi and Hutu were reified by the state, to the point that state ID cards were a major determinant of who was targeted for extermination."
from Before Conflict: Origins and Predictors of Ethnopolitical Conflict, Section 4

Typological Summary Underlying Presentation of Cases: Levels of Ethnic Conflict Report of Derry Conference.

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