Everything forces them to die

2 July | Genocidal infaticide in Rwanda in 1994

Tuesday

July

2024

6:00 pm

8:00 pm

The Maison Suger is pleased to host a presentation of the book Tout les oblige à mourir : L'infanticide génocidaire au Rwanda en 1994 by Violaine Baraduc, published in March 2024 by CNRS Éditions, with Fabio Viti (AMU, IMAf, Société des africanistes).

In 1994, the genocide perpetrated against the Tutsis of Rwanda did not spare the most intimate relationships. In some "mixed" families, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, husbands, and even fathers or mothers, take it out on their loved ones. The same goes for Béata Nyirankoko and Patricie Mukamana. After several weeks of massacres across the country, these two Hutu peasant women resign themselves to killing the children they have had with their Tutsi husbands.

Based on interviews, court records and observations, this investigation gives voice to the two mothers and various members of their families, accused or survivors. Questioning the role of women and gender relations in the killings, it reveals some of the key mechanisms at work in the reversal of emotional and social ties during a genocide ordered by the state, but massively executed by the population.

Speakers

Violaine Baraduc is an anthropologist and documentary filmmaker. She holds a PhD from EHESS, co-directed by Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Jean-Paul Colleyn, on “Violences d'un autre genre: ethnographier les mémoires criminelles des prisonnières génocidaires du Rwanda” (EHESS, 2022). She has won several awards in France and abroad (accessit du prix de thèse 2022 de l'EHESS, lauréate des prix de la Chancellerie des universités de Paris). Her film “À mots couverts”, co-directed with Alexandre Westphal, won the Grand Prix for historical documentary at the Rendez-vous de l'Histoire, in 2015.

Fabio Viti is an anthropologist, professor at Aix-Marseille Université (AMU), researcher at IMAF-Aix, director of the Anthropology Department (2023-2025), member of the “Espaces, Cultures, Sociétés” doctoral school (AMU). His research topics include the political and historical anthropology of the Baoulé, slavery, personal dependency relationships, work and learning, war and violence, colonization etc.

His main publications:

Il potere debole. Antropologia politica dell'Aitu nvle (Baule, Costa d'Avorio), Milano, F. Angeli, 1998, 416 p.
Schiavi, servi e dipendenti. Antropologia delle forme di dipendenza personale in Africa, Milano, Raffaello Cortina, 2007, XVIII-298 p.
Travail et apprentissage en Afrique de l'Ouest (Sénégal, Côte d'Ivoire, Togo), Paris, Karthala, 2013, 312 p.
La Guerre au Baoulé. Une ethnographie historique du fait guerrier. Côte d'Ivoire, XVIIIe-XXe siècles), Paris, Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 2024, 496 p. (see his interview on Canal U)