Chapter 1: Narrative Templates and Narrative Fissures in Post-Genocide Rwanda: The Susceptible Sur-Face of a Hardwired National Historical Canon

In the 21st century’s opening years, Maria Grever (2007) observed that the nation as the “grand narrative template of nineteenth-century historiography” (p. 44) was fading away in our age of globalization. This age arguably witnessed the erosion of the nation-state and its narratives, the uncritical learning of which governments had traditionally set up as a cornerstone of good citizenship and a remedy to internal divisions and conflict. More recently, Grever and van der Vlies (2017) have identified an apparent backlash in the “strong revival of national narratives in education” (p. 286) and specifically history textbooks, in the light of an educational discourse in many countries decrying the alleged unpatriotic marginalization of national history. Recent research adds another aspect, indicating that, counter to the increasing influence of global forces on worldwide curricula, national narratives remain a particularly marked feature of schooling in transitional, post-conflict societies (Lerch, 2016). This chapter will describe a particular case: The apparent, yet illusive triumph of a national historical canon in present-day, post-genocide Rwanda. It illuminates processes of the canonization of national narratives and their templates in Rwanda, unpacking the fundamental features of the state-approved storyline, its claims to the status of a “shared framework of historical interpretations” (Grever, 2007, p. 41), and the workings of the practices seeking to institute and perpetuate its consolidation, specifically in its teacher-and textbook-driven transmission and student consumption. For this purpose, alongside exploring official narratives as articulated in government-sponsored documents, including history curricula and textbooks, the chapter presents the findings of multiyear ethnographic classroom research into teachers’ engagement with the prescribed canon in the classroom and students’ responses to it.