ABSTRACT
Is it possible to tell the history of a silence? This chapter examines how public talk about violence in Burundi in 1972 was constrained and transformed. First, in response to a bloody rebellion, the state enacted a genocidal “repression” that depended on strategies of information control and denial. The silences created in this act then persisted in society through state censorship, propaganda and euphemism. Reference to the “events”, identified only by their date, avoided talk of or confrontation over the specific experiences they represented; state discourses of heroism, peace and reconciliation, by contrast, defined what should and should not be understood when speaking of these “events”. Because the limits of speech were defined by state words, changes in state regime brought possibilities of changes in public speech. At the height of political contestation, the state regime of silence broke down when the silences of 1972 became “multivocal”—rather than simply “breaking the silence”, political actors spoke about silence or performed “liturgic” silences of memorial. Although a Truth and Reconciliation Commission is now in operation, the same euphemisms once used to deny violence hold new value for many, suggesting an open end to the evolving history of a multivocal silence.
