ABSTRACT
The kind of reading of the genocide that Mamdani calls for here may problematize how we see the Rwanda genocide as an “incident” or a “moment”. An understanding of multiple and layered temporalities and geographies as an alternative to a teleological understanding of the genocide also moves the notion of a “critical incident” in journalism beyond the “event.” It moves beyond a single presidential shooting or plane crash; it involves killing before the plane crash, a massacre that takes place over several months in 1994, and a processes of remembering and retelling the story that continues today. While much literature has focused on state-sponsored hate media before and during the Rwanda genocide, less attention has been paid to other forms of journalism that existed at the same time, as well as frameworks of agency, urgency, a sense of journalistic responsibility, and resistance espoused by independent and non-state-sponsored journalists.
