Post-genocide identity politics and colonial durabilities in Rwanda

While academic literature has long explored the ways in which colonial reification of identity and narratives underpinning unequal racialised status of colonial subjects contributed to cycles of violence in the Great Lakes region, including in Rwanda, few ask the complementary question: Does the colonial legacy imprint on the 'post-conflict' era, shaping post-genocide attempts at nation-building and identity re-engineering carried out in the name of the broader project of peacebuilding? Using the conceptual framework of colonial durabilities, we argue that despite explicit attempts to remove the vestiges of colonialism, the colonial past endures, in everyday expressions of identity as well as in grand policies of its reformulation. The current paper aims to trace these vestiges in the transformations of identity politics and nation-building in Rwanda by looking at three distinct arenas: (i) the architecture of de-ethnicisation policy itself; (ii) the stubborn lingering of racialised distinctions in popular culture; and (iii) the rise of 'new' social divisions based on the country of exile. La litterature universitaire explore depuis longtemps en quoi la reification coloniale de l'identite et les narrations etayant les statuts racialises inegaux des sujets coloniaux ont contribue aux cycles de violence dans la region des Grands Lacs, y compris au Rwanda, mais peu posent la question complementaire: L'heritage colonial a-t' il une empreinte sur l'aire 'post-conflit', formant des tentatives post-genocide de construction nationale et de reingenierie de l'identite entreprises au non d'une construction de la paix plus large? En utilisant le cadre conceptuel des durabilites coloniales, nous avancons que malgre des tentatives explicites pour retirer les vestiges du colonialisme, le passe colonial perdure, dans toutes les expressions identitaires du quotidien ainsi que dans les grandes politiques et leur reformulation. Le present article vise a retracer ces vestiges dans les transformations des politiques identitaires et de la construction nationale au Rwanda en regardant trois domaines distincts: (i) l'architecture de la politique de de-ethnicisation elle-meme; (ii) la persistance tenace de distinctions racialisees dans la culture populaire, et (iii) la montee de 'nouvelles' divisions sociales fondees sur le pays d'exil.