Carceral urbanism: Reconstructing the architecture of punitive space in post-genocide Rwanda
| Author | Shakirah E Hudani |
| DOI | 10.1177/14624745211034568 |
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue: Legacies of Empire |
Article
Carceral urbanism:
Reconstructing the
architecture of punitive
space in post-genocide
Rwanda
Shakirah E Hudani
Department of African, African American and Diaspora
Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
Abstract
In this article I make the argument that the prison in post-genocide Rwanda is an
architectural artefact and a problem-space around which to examine the transitional
dilemmas of the post-genocide period. I examine the changing punitive architecture of
incarceration in Rwanda’s capital and in secondary urban areas. Looking at the space
of the prison in relation to the changing city, I posit that through the penal production of
space, the state reconfigures logics of punitive practices and urban governmentality.
Changing logics of incarceration are evident in Rwanda today in the deconcentration of
the capital, Kigali, to make way for an urban masterplanned order. In analyzing this shift
in the visibility of the penal order in Rwanda over time, I contend that the prison
constructs the city through its punitive and surveillance-based logic, as much as the
city constitutes the prison as a spatially segregated edifice. I examine two sets of
governmental spaces and practices that have run through different eras of Rwanda’s
colonial, post-independence and post-genocide periods: (a) the prison and punishment,
and (b) the reordering of the capital city and urban planning.
Keywords
Carceral spatiality, prison, punishment, Rwanda, urban modernization
Corresponding author:
Shakirah E Hudani, Department of African, African American and Diaspora Studies, University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
Email: shudani@unc.edu
Punishment & Society
!The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14624745211034568
journals.sagepub.com/home/pun
2021, Vol. 23(5) 631–649
Introduction
The prison in post-genocide Rwanda is an architectural artefact and a problem-
space around which to examine transitional dilemmas of the post-genocide period.
The Rwandan genocide of 800,000 ethnic minority Tutsis and the deaths of mod-
erate Hutus unfolded from April to July 1994 (Prunier, 1997). In its wake, the
Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) government confronted what I delimit as three
discursive problems that surrounded its transition from an incoming army to a
legitimate governing force: the problem of constructing the victim, the problem of
punishing the perpetrator, and the problem of defining the crime. I take on the
second of these problems in this article through an examination of key arenas in
which questions of perpetration have been cemented through spatial segregation in
post-genocide Rwanda. I address this problem in several ways: (1) I delineate the
move from typologically reordering and retributive to reconciliatory and reforma-
tive practices of transition in the post-genocide period in Rwanda and ask how the
state has repositioned the prison and discourses of punishment in its re-constituted
society. (2) I analytically excavate the interactivity between the prison and the city,
leading up to the current period of masterplanning and urban reimagining. In the
aftermath of the Genocide against the Tutsi, as it is officially named, largescale
incarceration and the visibility of prisons in the context of attempted reconciliation
were salient spatial dilemmas, particularly visible in urban areas. The problematic
of the post-genocide prison and the problem of reconciliation have hence been
spatialized dilemmas that have run across the country and contradicted official
discourse on national unity and reconciliation. I argue that recent deconcentration
and relocations of central prisons out of the center of cities in Rwanda’s capital
and in its main urban areas mark spatial breaks with the practices of punishment
that thread continuities to the punitive spatiality of previous historical periods.
Saliently, current plans for masterplanned spatial renewal have led to the refor-
mation of colonial urban town planning that saw the central prison as its center-
piece. (3) Finally, I analyze the changing nature of punishment and spatial
segregation as instrumental in shaping ethnic consciousness and the experience
of collectivities in the contexts of colonial, post-colonial and post-genocide periods
of repetitive rupture.
Ultimately, I consider that dilemmas of the post-genocide period have led to the
RPF-led state’s need to spatially and discursively demarcate the difference between
the extraordinary violence of the genocide and the reconstruction of ordinary crime
through the space of the city in the post-genocide period. To this end, it is impor-
tant to consider the role of codification of crime centered on the space of the city as
part of this demarcation of difference. The contemporary city serves as an arena of
regulation overseen by the proliferation of legal codes policing urban activity,
moving on from the earlier military securitization of urban space in the initial
post-genocide period. In analyzing a) the prison and punishment and b) the reor-
dering of the capital city and urban planning as two sets of governmental spaces
and practices that have run through different eras of Rwanda’s colonial, post-
632 Punishment & Society 23(5)
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