Performing the Nation: Genocide, Justice, Reconciliation by Ananda Breed (review)

It is noteworthy that the title of Ananda Breed’s absorbing book does not specifically name the country that is the focus of her analysis—Rwanda. Perhaps, in light of Rwanda’s reputation as the country that resurrected itself after the 1994 genocide through an awe-inspiring campaign of forgiveness and reconciliation, the book’s subtitle makes this explicit reference unnecessary. Breed’s book is not, however, a rosy narrative that depicts Rwanda as a beacon of hope in which a new national identity has superseded the divisions of ethnic hatred. Instead, she has produced a sensitive, nuanced portrayal of the complexities of nationhood in the context of an authoritarian state. The nation is not so much performed as it is mandated; the role of performance is to allow alternative transcripts in which notions of shared suffering and human connections are glimpsed.

Breed borrows from government rhetoric and terms the articulation of a post-genocide Rwanda as “Rwandanicity” in which the state seeks to rewrite Rwandan identity through the abolishment of ethnic distinctions. As she painstakingly explains, however, this laudable rhetoric works to conceal the consolidation of power of an Anglophone Tutsi elite and the recasting of Tutsi cultural expressions as Rwandan. Breed has achieved a startling degree of access into the workings of Rwandanicity through her work as a theatre practitioner, particularly in workshops she conducted for prisoners at a state-run rehabilitation camp and at the Kigali Central Prison. As she herself acknowledges, this work meant that she was “becoming inherently entwined in the rewriting project” (21), but it also means that she was well-positioned to observe how micro-performances of alternative nationhood slip through the cracks of macro-productions of Rwandanicity.

Breed shifts between analyses of conventional theatre and that of gacaca, a vast, community-based justice system in which alleged perpetrators of genocide were tried on a weekly basis from 2005 to 2012. Based on the author’s descriptions, the comparative complexity of the plays tends to pale next to the actual gacaca proceedings discussed in chapter 3, which is one of the strongest chapters in the book for its sustained and focused analysis of the multiple layers contained in this particular iteration of justice. This chapter clarifies the early potential of gacaca in 2005 and 2006, when Breed observed trials that served as local forums for open dialogue and paved a nebulous path of coexistence in a post-genocide society. When she returned for additional research in 2010, however, she found that this potential had dissipated in exchange for a climate of coercion and incrimination.

She traces a similar dynamic in the grassroots associations that use theatre and dance as a tool of community-building. These associations were able to articulate an ethic of coexistence due to a recognition of shared suffering between Tutsi and Hutu; however, this ethic also yielded to a climate of incrimination as plays were instrumentalized to elicit confessions from spectators. Similarly, she shows how productions about traumatic memories of the genocide are often appropriated in the interests of “larger national and collective narratives connected to justice and reconciliation” (176). Breed goes on, however, to provide a more optimistic consideration of Rwandan theatre through her analysis of a theatre piece called Ukuri Mubinyoma (Truth in Lies), a play about domestic violence created by Hope Azeda and the Kigali-based theatre company Mashirika, which toured the country in 2006. In Breed’s analysis the play serves as a cautious intervention in its “claim that gendered acts of violence are ongoing and may question the notion of Rwanda as a ‘post-conflict’ zone while violence has increased on a domestic level” (166). This is a rare glimpse of a play that complicates rather than promotes state narratives of Rwandanicity.

Breed’s task is a delicate one. This book will potentially reach Rwandan audiences through its cautious explication of how a pro-Tutsi ethnicity continues to be promoted in the guise of national culture. She also regularly quotes government officials...