As I stated in pt. 1, space is such a transmutable force of actual representation that words fail to iradicate the transgressions that take place on its soil, disallowing individual words the ability to create. The political imagination of the individual — global, regional, local policy, notions of human rights, perceptions of civil society — end up becoming items of our abject materialism. What we are deserved, our naturalness if you will, drive us, compelling our decisions in directions we see as pragmatic, as opposed to some existential necessity.

In Rwanda for instance, individuals still live in the neighborhoods of their relatives / friends / loved ones demise. Hutu perpetrators worship next to Tutsi victims. They engage in conversations all but skipping past the (insert gigantic colored animal here) that rests on their chests. In this instance, moments of authenticity are hard to imagine. Can a collectivity engage in an authentic manner when their presence in the moment is predicated upon a recent history of violence. Their knowledge of each other is now in and of violence.

Rev. Katongole, a Duke divinity prof., remarks that what the church in Rwanda needs, in fact desires, is a new space of radical imagination, called “wild spaces”.

(poor segue)

The Muslim population in Rwanda is nominal at best. In fact, they represent a modicum 2-3%. But subsequent the genocide, Islamic conversions were on the rise. In researching a variety of recent converts compulsions to ‘change’ religions, two very distinct and historically centered notions arose–protection and purification. In communities where the untouched dead (meaning that many of the slain bodies have yet to receive a proper burial — instead their bodies — rotting flesh on bone and bones — are what’s comprised of memorial) have become excellent representations of not only a violent communal rupture, but mass conversions, failed spaces of redemption signal to everyone, a failed past; a failed space; a failed concept. Individuals walking by an old church where their relatives lay slain by grenade, bullet, or machete, are suppose to envisage this pain how? As a fragment in their continuing present? As a threshold between a past of consumption transformed into present of redemption? Or does a more pragmatic perspective point of view take hold? For some, therefore, they avoid the conversation, and convert. They’ve become Muslim because Muslims protected their own; hell, they protected their friends that weren’t Muslim; those in danger simply because they were the temporally personified political sacraficial lamb: Tutsi. Christians becoming Muslim because it’s safer.

Yet, on the other hand, Hutus have become Muslim to purify their staind existence. In order to wash the blood off, they believed their previous religious qualifier ‘failed’ them. Therefore, they sought a new, apolitical community. One that sought an identity of redemption, circumventing what it meant to be Hutu and Tutsi, and grew to become known as Muslim.

To understand this fully, one needs to understand the church history in Rwanda. One can surmise in the postcolonial context that much of how the church hierarchy was situated was predicated upon class and political influence. Many within the church held multiple positions, which provided ’stature’ for the church. With that said, I think the gist is pretty clear and the assumptions even clearer.

So if we go back to Katongole’s notions of ‘wild spaces’, we are confronted by a partaking of the Eucharist that prompts us, motivates us, guides our decisions. It becomes the creator of space, not individual or collective notions of political wealth.

Right now I’m writing basically about what I eventually want to study further in graduate school: violence, memory, and conversion in the context of Church space in Rwanda. The basic premise is that the intended use of space was to become a space of unity and redemption; that the history of ethnic (read political) identities were to be replaced by a collective identity in the Blood of the Eucharist. You know, the basic romantic notion behind church, providing a place for Hutus and Tutsis an opportunity to unite, throwing off political divisional qualifiers and embracing a collective one.

But, when we look at buildings of any type we can assume and situate them into spheres of influence, ie consumer, governmental, or (in this case) spiritual. Cities are designed this way. Architecture makes claims, has goals, signifies, which ultimately poses a question. Did this space achieve what was intended, without words, without wanting to say anything, without having to say anything; hence, does it need explaination? A French philosopher, Baudrillard, calls this the radicality of architecture. Meaning, no matter what the intention is, the truth regarding architecture becomes involuntary. The space moves, no matter what and how words are used to descrbe a certain space (in particular, the church), the truth of its potential comes in the unspoken, linguistic void, of its literal essence. This essence is the fluid redefining of space that can take forms, he suggests contrary, if not opposite, to the reality of its conception.

Now, looking at Rwanda, the church spoke of unity, looked unified; people intermarried, had bar-b-qs…they did life together. But as some would suggest, the blood of Christ never penetrated their political identities. They brought them into the church, and let that dictate the movement. Unfortunately, the actual, the reality of these spaces in Rwanda, manifest itself into an altogether different transubstantiation–maybe the blood of Christ did change the individual, but the blood of the political changed and presented the community with the true radicality of the church–its ability to kill, and kill scores.

No matter the intention of the church, the reason it was built, the truth of its existence transforms when the masses enter it with other intentions and allegiances that supercede that of Christ. But make no mistake, this is not, on any level, an image of that age old African problem of tribalism; this is modernity; this is the distinct realm of the political where only notions of friend and enemy exist. How often have we seen this? –The intention of a space subsumed by distinctions such as these.

Nevertheless, as a result, the truth of church space in Rwanda is witnessed (not heard) in its transformation from a space of violence to that of memory. A sad result of a truly modern version of transubstantiation–a place of redemption and forgiveness changed by a drop of blood into display of failure and violent memory.