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Presentation
The Open Grave: Memory and Monument
Presented at Weber State College, Ogden, Utah, at the ‘Rwanda 20 Years Later’ conference. (2015)
  • Tawia Ansah, Florida International University College of Law
Abstract
In this chapter I review the genocide museum memorial in Kigali with the issues raised by Sodaro in mind. In particular, the question whether, or how, memorial ‘takes the connection and urgency out of what is happening now’, implicates the efficacy of monumental memorials to events such as genocide. Implicitly, the alternative to memorializing an event within a monumental form would be memorial work represented as porous and perspectival, its form – rather than its effects – more diffused and labile. The question then would be whether or to what extent such amorphous memorialization would engender the connection that is allegedly severed by monumental memorial, the implication being that the work of memory would be undertaken as a process rather than an end product, the ‘monument’.
Keywords
  • genocide,
  • Kigali Memorial,
  • monument,
  • Rwanda
Disciplines
Publication Date
2015
Citation Information
Tawia Ansah. "The Open Grave: Memory and Monument" Presented at Weber State College, Ogden, Utah, at the ‘Rwanda 20 Years Later’ conference. (2015)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/tawia-ansah/11/