Agaciro, vernacular memory, and the politics of memory in post-genocide Rwanda

Recent debates in post-genocide and post-war Rwanda have explored how official commemorations of the Genocide Against the Tutsi in many ways borrow and ‘mimic’ the Holocaust memory ‘paradigm’. The academic canon on post-1994 Rwanda focuses the mostly on politics around this official memory that has evolved into hegemonic memory and on how it has been mobilized to promote a selective memory of the past. However, there is little analysis of vernacular, bottom-up memory practices that have evolved alongside the official one. Using observation, semi-structured interviews, and secondary sources, this article examines vernacular memory practices of mourning the wartime missing in Rwanda. Through the concepts of ‘multidirectional’ and ‘traveling’ memory, this study examines how survivors of these interconnected violent histories that unfolded in two different countries claim multi-faceted Agaciro (dignity, self-respect, and self-worth) through two different memory approaches. The article argues that while actors in official memory approach claim Agaciro through borrowing from another global hegemonic memory, respondents in this study created vernacular avenues to remember their missing loved ones. The article finds that while hegemonic memory might appear to only compete with vernacular memory, there are also ‘knots’ that connect these two memory forms in Rwanda’s context and beyond. In its conclusion, the article proposes an Agaciro-centred approach to examine the relationships between official and unofficial memory practices that have been reenergized through protests both offline and online in Rwanda and beyond. The article contributes to scholarship on Rwanda’s post-genocide memory politics, transcultural memory, and decolonial perspectives on dignity.