Die Transformation des Bruchs - Grundlagen einer Raumsoziologie nach Massengewalt

Mass violence and gross human rights violations lead to a profound crisis of the institutions that regulate social and political interaction. Mass violence also destroys social bonds, social values, norms and trust. In short, mass violence provokes a rupture that relates to both, individuals and societies as a whole. This thesis poses the question: how do societies and individuals transform this rupture? The author aimes to describe the ways, in which such a rupture leads to a socio-individual process in dealing with the experience of mass violence; this process is conceptionalised as the transformation of rupture. In order to respond to the research question, the thesis proposes a spatial approach through which the socio-political process of the transformation of rupture would become theoretically intelligible. As to empirics, the thesis particularly explores the transformation of rupture in post-genocide Rwanda. By developing a spatial heuristic that incorporates various strands of literature, the thesis also contributes to the “spatial turn” in social sciences and to country studies on Rwanda; with regard to the latter, especially to those, focusing on memorials and commemoration. With regard to transitional justice the thesis critically scrutinizes the prevailing assumptions of closure and healing. The spatial approach allows us to see that the constitution of space is an ongoing process which is not to be closed at any time, i.e. the idea of closure contradicts the process of production of space itself.