A Colonial Genealogy of Violence Against Tutsi Women in The
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Gender-Based Violence and Submerged Histories: A Colonial Genealogy of Violence Against Tutsi Women in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Gender Studies by Helina Asmelash Beyene 2014 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Gender-Based Violence and Submerged Histories: A Colonial Genealogy of Violence Against Tutsi Women in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide by Helina Asmelash Beyene Doctor of Philosophy in Gender Studies University of California, Los Angeles, 2014 Professor Sondra Hale, Chair My dissertation is a genealogical study of gender-based violence (GBV) during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. A growing body of feminist scholarship argues that GBV in conflict zones results mainly from a continuum of patriarchal violence that is condoned outside the context of war in everyday life. This literature, however, fails to account for colonial and racial histories that also inform the politics of GBV in African conflicts. My project examines the question of the colonial genealogy of GBV by grounding my inquiry within postcolonial, transnational and intersectional feminist frameworks that center race, historicize violence, and decolonize knowledge production. I employ interdisciplinary methods that include (1) discourse analysis of the gender-based violence of Belgian rule and Tutsi women’s iconography in colonial texts; (2) ii textual analysis of the constructions of Tutsi women’s sexuality and fertility in key official documents on overpopulation and Tutsi refugees in colonial and post-independence Rwanda; and (3) an ethnographic study that included leading anti gendered violence activists based in Kigali, Rwanda, to assess how African feminists account for the colonial legacy of gendered violence in the 1994 genocide. My findings reveal that highly sexualized colonial ideologies such as the Hamitic Hypothesis, not only marked the Tutsi population as non-indigenous, non-black invaders, but also codified Tutsi female sexuality and fertility as a beguiling, non-indigenous threat to the natural population of the land. The colonial era provided the lexicon that staged Tutsi sexuality within the blueprint of African indigeneity, which the post-independence Rwandan state reassembled in its discourses surrounding overpopulation, refugees and national security. Such discursive consolidation positioned Tutsi women’s sexuality as biopolitical threats to the national security of the indigenous population, making them high stakes targets in state crises. My ethnographic study further reveals that Rwandan activists offer explanations that capture the intersection of empire and patriarchy in the making of GBV in African conflicts like the Rwandan genocide of 1994. While Rwandan women’s rights advocates tend to deploy human rights and patriarchy discourses like their western counterparts, the activists provide multiple and more complex articulations that historicize GBV and implicate sites that go beyond patriarchal culture alone. They identify the colonial, the post-colonial as well as the pre-colonial era as sites in the making of Tutsi rapability. The study calls for feminist interpretative frameworks that extend beyond single-axis explanation of GBV that do not naturalize the nation-state and resist global imperial expansion in the name of addressing GBV. iii This dissertation of Helina Asmelash Beyene is approved. Esha De Sandra Harding Andrea Smith Sondra Hale, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2014 iv DEDICATION For Mommy and Ash who never questioned my choices. For my sisters, Hiriti and Beza, one chosen for me and one I got to choose. For Mary Elizabeth Bass Brayant who left this earth to become my spirit guide. v Table of Contents Chapter 1 ....................................................................................................................................... 1 Reframing Gender-Based Violence in Conflict Zones: Overview and Theoretical Frameworks ... 1 1.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 My Argument ................................................................................................................................. 5 1.3 Significance of the Project ............................................................................................................. 7 1.4 Brief Historical Background of Rwanda and the 1994 Genocide .................................................. 8 1.5 Literature Review ......................................................................................................................... 18 1.6 Theoretical Framework ................................................................................................................ 30 1.7 Colonialism, Nationalism, Militarism and Patriarchy: New Feminist Frameworks for Analyzing the Gendered Violence and the Rwandan Genocide .......................................................................... 34 1.8 Research Questions ...................................................................................................................... 39 1.9 Research Methods ........................................................................................................................ 40 1.10 Overview of Chapters ................................................................................................................. 46 Chapter 2 ..................................................................................................................................... 49 Gender-Based Violence and Colonial Complicity in Belgian Rule in Central Africa .................... 49 2.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 49 2.2 Hardheaded Disentanglements: The Link between Conquest and Rape ...................................... 54 2.3 Colonial Love Stories: A Colonial Rite of Passage ..................................................................... 56 2.4 The Great Epics of Africa: Colonialism and Sexual Discipline ................................................... 63 2.5 Movement, Fertility and Indigeneity in Colonial Rule: The Reification of Identity and the Codification of Gendered Violation ................................................................................................... 66 2.6 Erotic Entrapments: The Gendered Politics of Colonial Representation ..................................... 71 2.7 Hamitic Hypothesis: An Overview .............................................................................................. 73 vi 2.8 The Tutsi as Hamite ..................................................................................................................... 77 2.9 The Blackening of Ham and The Sexuality of Hamiticism: The Black Mother as Site of Degeneracy ......................................................................................................................................... 79 2.10 Colonial Iconographies of Tutsi Women: The Politics of Culture, Desire and Fear .................. 83 2.11 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 93 Chapter 3 ..................................................................................................................................... 94 “A Cockroach Cannot Give Birth to a Butterfly:” The Politics of Indigeneity and Fertility and Sexual Violence in Population and Refugee Discourses of Pre-Genocide Rwanda ........................ 94 3.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 94 3.2 Population, Security and Fertility: Technological Assemblage of Biopower .............................. 97 3.3 The Imperial Politics of Population in the 20th Century: Overpopulation and Underpopulation . 99 3.4 Population Discourses on Africa: Primordial Wombs and State Crisis ..................................... 106 3.5 African Refugees: Pure Victim and Pure Danger ...................................................................... 113 3.6 Indigeneity In African Refugee Discourses ............................................................................... 116 3.7 Bare Life and the Feminization of the African Refugee ............................................................ 119 3.8 New Discursive Convergences of State Insecurity: Population Growth, Refugees and Environmental Crisis ........................................................................................................................ 121 3.9 German and Belgian Population Discourses on Rwanda ........................................................... 124 3.10 Post-independence Politics of Population in Rwanda .............................................................. 133 3.11 Population Explosion and the Refugee Question ..................................................................... 137 3.12 Framing the Genocide as Overpopulation ................................................................................ 144 3.13 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 148 Chapter 4 ..................................................................................................................................