In an attempt to analyze the concepts of the witness, Homo Sacer, remembrance, redemption, and the state of exception the first project returns to the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s. The over-arching aim is to probe the limits and limitations of these concepts especially in relation to recent theoretical and philosophical debates which build on the works of Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben. The project will involve fieldwork in Rwanda and at the international tribunal in Arusha in Tanzania as well as philosophical discussions on the usefulness of these concepts in other historical and cultural contexts, e.g. the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Armenian genocide, the Soviet Gulag, and the genocide in China during World War II.
