A Matter of lies and death - Necropolitics and the question of engagement with the aftermath of Rwanda’s Genocide

ABSTRACT

This article explores Achille Mbembe’s notion of necropolitics in conjunction with Avery Gordon’s figures of spectres and the haunting of ghosts. These concepts are applied to consider different acts of subversion and resistance, performed in the face of dominant discourses and practices in the realm of refugee governance, which work to silence certain experiences; and in the knowledge that breaking such silences can have deadly consequences. The article is constructed around a single case study, the story of a survivor of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and its aftermath. This story is contextualized historically to illuminate important continuities, from Rwanda’s colonization and colonial governance to contemporary refugee governance regimes. It also highlights some of the particular ways in which women were affected by this history. Against the deadly and silencing effects of contemporary discourses and practices discussed, the article contemplates, following Rosi Braidotti, more affirmative alternatives. These entail questioning the notion of individual identities and being guided by an ethos of engagement, operating in the awareness of the entanglement of space and time, of life and death, and seeking to overcome the binaries of us/them, truth/lie, fact/fiction, deserving/undeserving, perpetrator/victim, and genuine/bogus refugee that have traditionally shaped global refugee governance regimes.

KEYWORDS:

• Biopower
• refugee governance
• historical injustice
• subjugated knowledge
• performance
• ethics of engagement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dorothee Hölscher

Dorothee Hölscher (PhD) (corresponding author) Dorothee Hölscher (PhD) is a lecturer of social work at Griffith University, Australia, and a research associate at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. She also serves on the Australasia-Pacific Associate Board of Ethics & Social Welfare, and as the secretary of the Association of Schools of Social Work in Africa. Dorothee’s main research interests are in applied ethics with a focus on justice, and on social work with cross-border migrants.

Consolée Kanamugire

Consolée Kanamugire (MSW) Consolée Kanamugire holds a master’s degree in social work. She has lost her parents and siblings to war fatalities at a young age, which led her to flee from her native country. Consolée is currently working for a not-for-profit organization, Refugee Social Services, providing a range of psycho-social services and integration support for refugees and asylum seekers around Durban and Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.

Hyacinth Udah

Hyacinth Udah (PhD) Hyacinth Udah (PhD) is a researcher at Griffith University. His research interests cross the disciplines of education, sociology and social work, with a particular focus on issues of social justice, equity and diversity, race and immigration, cultural identity and global cultural flows, sociology of education and children social and emotional wellbeing.