Tools of Violence, Traces of Memory: Photographic Identity Cards and the Visual Narration of the Rwandan Genocide

Photo identity cards played a crucial role in the politics leading to and the perpetration of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The identity cards and their portraits now figure prominently in Rwanda's national memorial sites as both evidence of the racist politics that culminated in genocide and as commemorative images. Attending to the interpretive shift prompted by the material transformation of bureaucratic portraits into memorial images, this paper will examine the complexities of using portraiture to memorialize mass violence. To critically examine the politics of transforming bureaucratic portraits into commemorative images, this paper draws on Ariella Azoulay's ontology of photography, which presents photography as an ongoing event capable of continually deriving alternative interpretations from the unfixed meaning of the photograph. By approaching the identity cards and their portraits through this relationally-focused ontology, this paper provides an account of the ambiguity present in the different uses of the photographs, focusing on the portraits' repressive and honorific capacities and attempts to stabilize their political meaning in the development of Rwanda's post-genocide narratives. While the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre exhibit works to re-appropriate identity cards and their portraits for memorial ends, I contend that the changes to the photograph's material conditions cannot produce a fixed or stable interpretation.