Worldmaking, Demonized Rituals, Scorched Earth: A Path to Genocide in the Work of Scholastique Mukasonga

Abstract

This article examines how literary works archive genocide in Rwanda. Scholastique Mukasonga’s Ce que murmurent les collines: Nouvelles rwandaises documents and explores the longitudinal historical processes that initiated transformational changes in sociocultural and political ecology with attendant shifts in material realities and cultural cohesion. An interdisciplinary focus that brings political and literary in conversation highlights Scholastique Mukasonga’ semphasis on the disastrous consequences of two legacies of colonial governance and postcolonial decision-making in Rwanda and goes beyond institutionalised memory. Cultural alienation, stigmatisation of indigenous practices, forced resettlement, and demonisation of existing faiths are parallel processes that lead to what Mukasonga represents as a scorched earth, where an aversion becomes hatred. Mukasonga situates the genocide of 1994 in a continuum and reveals the intertwined nature of theological and political interpretations that led to the instigation of alienation and group hatred.