In the Midst of Death We Are in Life . . . Biopolitics and Beginning Again in Rwanda
| Date | 01 December 2007 |
| Published date | 01 December 2007 |
| Author | Eugene Mcnamee |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663907082732 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
IN THE MIDST OF DEATH WE
ARE IN LIFE ... BIOPOLITICS
AND BEGINNING AGAIN IN
RWANDA
EUGENE MCNAMEE
University of Ulster, UK
ABSTRACT
This article, using a framework of analysis based on Foucauldian ideas of ‘biopolitics’
and Agamben’s ‘completion’ of that notion, together with the more focused theoriza-
tions of Mahmood Mamdani, re-visits two basic questions of the Rwandan genocide
which have not been satisfactorily resolved by purely materialist analyses of the
roots, dynamics and consequences of the genocide. The first is that of why so many
civilians participated in the massacres, or to put the question in strong terms, ‘how
could even the most extreme forms of indoctrination or duress have produced such
an outpouring of murder by civilians against civilians?’ The second relates to the
acknowledged failure by the international community to prevent or stop the genocide,
and might be phrased ‘how could so many stand idly by when so little could have
prevented such untold suffering?’ The effort is to examine the plausibility and value
of linking together on a conceptual (biopolitical) level the ‘internal’ questions of why
a genocide in Rwanda and why in that way, with the ‘external’ questions of why non-
intervention followed by intervention in the form that it eventually arrived, using in
particular Agamben’s theory of the relationship between sovereignty and ‘bare life’.
KEY WORDS
animality; biopolitics; genocide; humanity; Rwanda; sovereignty
Even if an extermination can be shared in conversation, it cannot be explained
in an acceptable way, even among those who lived through it. A new question
we had not foreseen always crops up.1
SOCIAL &LEGAL STUDIES Copyright © 2007 SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore, www.sagepublications.com
0964 6639, Vol. 16(4), 483–508
DOI: 10.1177/0964663907082732
INTRODUCTION
IN THE face of the terrible materiality of the Rwandan genocide, and the
simple materiality of the intervention that, it is often argued, could have
prevented it, it can seem shameful to make the case for revisiting and re-
examining some of the issues through a more conceptual prism. The thirst
for such enquiry when all seems already clear is the general target, for example,
of Sven Lindqvist in his well-known book Exterminate All the Brutes (the title
is a quotation in homage to Joseph Conrad from his novel Heart of Darkness)
wherein he traces the roots of genocide as an idea to European racism and
colonial expansion in Africa (Lindqvist, 2002). The development of this argu-
ment brings Lindqvist to a position shared by many others who participate
in debates on the legal propriety and political utility of humanitarian inter-
vention, that ‘it is not knowledge that we lack, but the courage to understand
what we know and to draw conclusions’ (Lindqvist, 2002: 172). As Michael
Walzer, a leading figure in these debates, puts it, ‘since we know, roughly, what
ought to be done, we have to argue about how to do it; we have to argue about
agents, means and endings’ (Walzer, 2002: 35). Intervention as a doctrine seeks
then a kind of Alexandrian attitude to the complexities of international affairs
when the issues come down to core questions of humanitarianism, a smiting
of the Gordian Knot with the sword of righteous militarism.2
Yet genocide is a crime wherein the actual deeds are inseparable from the
motivating idea of the entire destruction of a people; the materiality of
genocide is inseparable from the conceptual. While intervention may attend
to the material issues, the danger is that the underlying conceptual problems
remain unaddressed and unresolved. The position which will be set forth
throughout this article, which regards an internationalist socio-legal audience
seeking to relate to the circumstances of genocide in Rwanda or elsewhere,
is that purely material analysis (which tends to gravitate explicitly or implic-
itly towards the question of ‘to intervene or not to intervene’ and auxiliary
questions of precisely when and to what degree) is insufficient without due
consideration to related conceptual questions. Such conceptual consideration
is normally limited to the framework of the politico-legal trade-off between
international (humanitarian) law and national sovereignty, within which
precise answers are sought to the questions of balance between one and the
other and therefore of likely long-term effect. Such conceptual limitation has
an unavoidably messianic pulse, in that it presumes that there is sufficiently
solid ground from which intervention can be launched, sufficiently resolved
final questions of what constitutes humanity such that action is triggered in
its defence, sufficiently clear ideas of how to proceed that the messy details
of how the situation has arisen can be downplayed in favour of a concentra-
tion on what remedies may be put in place to base a sustainable future. Aside
from all abstract criticism of these ideas, recent experience, particularly in
Iraq, suggests that this approach does not deserve a status of pushing aside
all other potential views – and this remark is made with all due regard to more
detailed questions of the multiple levels of analysis which might be brought
484 SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 16(4)
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