Accounting For Horror: Post-Genocide Debates in Rwanda [Paperback]

Nigel Eltringham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 20, 2004

The 1994 Rwandan genocide was a monumental atrocity in which at least 500,000 Tutsi and tens of thousands of Hutu were murdered in less than four months. Since 1994, members of the Rwandan political class who recognise those events as genocide have struggled to account for it and bring coherence to what is often perceived as irrational, primordial savagery.Most people agree on the factors that contributed to the genocide -- colonialism, ethnicity, the struggle to control the state. However, many still disagree over the way these factors evolved, and the relationship between them. This continuing disagreemnt raises questions about how we come to understand historical events -- understandings that underpin the possibility of sustainable peace.Drawing on extensive research among Rwandese in Rwanda and Europe, and on his work with a conflict resolution NGO in post-genocide Rwanda, Nigel Eltringham argues that conventional modes of historical representation are inadequate in a case like Rwanda. Single, absolutist narratives and representations of genocide actually reinforce the modes of thinking that fuelled the genocide in the first place. Eltringham maintains that if we are to understand the genocide, we must explore the relationship between multiple explanations of what happened and interrogate how -- and why -- different groups within Rwandan society talk about the genocide in different ways.

Editorial Reviews

Review

I think it is going to be a very fine contribution to African Studies. It is well structured, cogently argued, erudite and most of the time well-written -- Rene Lemarchand, author of Burundi: Ethnic Conflict and Genocide - professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Florida. The proposal certainly identifies some of the most critical issues in the discourse about the Rwandan Genocide. -- Carina Tersakian

About the Author

Nigel Eltringham is a Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology of SOAS, London. He worked for three years with a conflict resolution NGO in Rwanda before conducting doctoral research in Rwanda and among the Rwandan Diaspora in Europe. He has extensively published on post-genocide Rwanda.

Product Details

• Paperback: 248 pages
• Publisher: Pluto Press (January 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0745320007
• ISBN-13: 978-0745320007
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 4.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,014,040 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Disturbing but fascinating, November 17, 2005

By 

Peter Hughes - See all my reviews

This review is from: Accounting For Horror: Post-Genocide Debates in Rwanda (Paperback)

Ten years ago horrific stories began to emerge from Rwanda. Almost a million people had been brutally murdered in a few short months. Men, women and children had been butchered in the most revolting way in massacres of tens of thousands. The savagery of the genocide appeared to exceed even that of the Nazis. How could this possibly have happened - again? And where was the United Nations? Surely they had been set up after the Second World War precisely to stop this kind of thing ever happening again? The UN, it seemed, had shepherded the victims into so-called `safe' areas, only to abandon them later to their dreadful fate.
Accounting for Horror seeks to `account' for what happened in Rwanda, but it does it in a way that is never simplistic. It confronts head-on the casual enquirer who only wants to know `who are the victims and who are the perpetrators?' Instead it deconstructs such facile questions in a way that is both disturbing and fascinating. In this respect it reminded me very much of Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem.
I bought this book because I wanted to know more about what happened in Rwanda. This book explains it in a way that works on many different levels. It is an illuminating study of one of the darkest chapters in recent human history.