Thirty years ago, the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda began. But what does " thirty years ago" really mean ?
Beyond the questions of commemoration and remembrance, beyond the necessary debates on the responsibility of France and the international community, beyond even the role that history - and, more generally, the social sciences - can play in understanding the genocidal spiral, it is indeed the dizzying question of what is a recent past that is posed to us all, from Rwanda onwards.
A past, certainly, when so many survivors aspire to escape it in order to project themselves into the future, even if many of them turn back and confront it, exploring the places where it lies buried. But it's a recent past, which is still alive and kicking, and in many ways unassimilable, even if it's already part of the time scale of a long-term event. In this sense, the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda is fully integrated, with its historical specificities, family memories and personal mourning, into a shared historical condition. We know from experience that, when it comes to the instrumentalization of memories and the falsification of history, thirty years is often the beginning of a dangerous period. That's why we need to start today
a collective reflection on how to reappropriate this history.
Looking beyond academic specialties and the barriers between academic and artistic fields, the digital magazine Entre-Temps, attached to Patrick Boucheron's chair at the Collège de France, offers two round-table discussions on what lies at the heart of its editorial line: highlighting and dialoguing experiences of transmission, teaching and creation.
