Genocide is by nature generic, both in its definition and in its execution. The crime of genocide, as outlined in the 1948 United Nations Convention, concerns the attempt to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part. Such an ambition, to destroy a whole people, is not fulfilled overnight. Instead, the genocides of the twentieth century in Armenia, the Nazi death camps, the Balkans and beyond, have taught us that such violence commonly involves planning, public communication, administration and sustained action. For the international community to respond, and for the perpetrators to be prosecuted in international courts, there later occurs a process of classification whereby the crimes committed are detailed and analysed in relation to the UN Convention. Categorization then is key to genocide at all stages: both in the initial preparation when its exponents work to present the target population as homogenous, threatening and hateful and much later when the complicated specificities of killings in discrete geographical and cultural settings must be attributed to the fixed categories designated by international law. This chapter will argue that writing from and about the Rwandan genocide is defined as much in opposition to ways of thinking associated with genocide and in response to related cultural traditions as it is shaped by traditional literary categories.

Such an assertion might initially seem to confuse the generic in its broadest conceptual sense with the specific applications of genre to the textual. However, on reflection we will see that with the case of writing about genocide it is the very ‘genericity’ of the topic and the unified desire to write against its violent consequences that forms a common thread through a varied selection of literary representations. Daniel Chandler, reflecting on the difficulties faced by critics attempting to define genre theory, writes that ‘Conventional definitions of genres tend to be based on the notion that they constitute particular conventions of content (such as themes or settings) and/or form (including structure and style) which are shared by the texts which are regarded as belonging to them’ (1997: 2).