Quotessence
Home / Authors / Philip Gourevitch Books
Philip Gourevitch

Philip Gourevitch Books

Author

Related Quotes

“The world powers made it clear in 1994 that they did not care to fight genocide in central Africa, but they had yet to come up with a convincing explanation of why they were content to feed it. The false promise of protection represented by the camps placed Hutu civilians, as well as Tutsis and everyone else in the region, in mortal peril, and it was no comfort that this state of affairs was not brought about by a malevolent international policy in central Africa but by the lack of any coherent policy.”

GenocideUnited NationsRwandaRefugee CampsNgos
Book:We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families
Create image

“Genocide, after all, is an exercise in community building. A vigorous totalitarian order requires that the people be invested in the leader's scheme, and while genocide may be the most perverse and ambitious means to this end, it is also the most comprehensive. In 1994, Rwanda was regarded in much of the rest of the world as the exemplary instance of chaos and anarchy associated with collapsed states. In fact, the genocide was the product of order, authoritarianism, decades of modern political theorizing and indoctrination, and one of the most meticulously administered states in history. And strange as it may sound, the ideology–or what Rwandans call "the logic"–of genocide was promoted as a way not to create suffering but alleviate it. The specter of an absolute menace that requires absolute eradication binds leader and people in a hermetic utopian embrace, and the individual–always an annoyance to totality–ceases to exist.”

GenocideNonfictionRAfrican HistoryRwandan Genocide
Book:We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families
Create image

“So Rwandan history is dangerous. Like all of history, it is a record of successive struggles for power, and to a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality - even, as is so often the case, when that story is written in their blood.”

HistoryPowerRwandan Genocide
Book:We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families
Create image

“...Five out of 6 children who had been in Rwanda during the slaughter had witnessed bloodshed... Imagine what the totality of such devastation means for a society and it becomes clear that Hutu Power's crimes was much greater than the murder of nearly a million people. Nobody in Rwanda escaped direct physical or psychic damage. The terror was designed to be total and enduring, a legacy to leave Rwandans spinning and disoriented in the slipstream of their memories for a very long time to come, and in that it was successful.”

TerrorRwandan Genocide
Book:We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families
Create image

“Never before in modern memory had a people who slaughtered another people, or in whose name the slaughter was carried out, been expected to live with the remainder of the people that was slaughtered, completely intermingled, in the same tiny communities, as one cohesive national society.”

Rwandan Genocide
Book:We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families
Create image

“I'm not pro-war. But I think war has been the dominant condition of humankind, and peace has been the anomaly - certainly sustained periods of peace that profit great masses of people - and I think war has worked, even awful hellish wars: worked to staunch fascist aggression in Europe, worked to preserve the Union after secession in the United States, etc. Not always, maybe not often, but to say never is to reject history in favor of a wishful unreality.”

PeopleThinkingHas BeensWarStatesUnitedUnited StatesConditionsPeriodsMassEuropeUnionsProfitFavorsAwfulPreservesEtcRejectsHumankindAggressionDominantFascistsUnrealityAnomaliesSecessionPro War
Author:Philip Gourevitch
Create image

“The people are living seperately together," he said. "So there is responsibility. I cry, you cry. You cry, I cry. We all come running, and the one that stays quiet, the one that stays home, must explain. Is he in league with the criminals? Is he a coward? And what would he expect when he cries? This is simple. This is normal. This is community.”

PeopleSaidHomeRunningTogetherCommunitySimpleResponsibilityCryQuietNormalCriminalsLeagueCoward
Book:We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories From Rwanda
Create image

“The West's post-Holocaust pledge that genocide would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow, and for all the fine sentiments inspired by the memory of Auschwitz, the problem remains that denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.”

ProblemEvilMemoriesCryFineRemainsWestInspiredPostsSentimentsGenocideHolocaustHollowPledgeDoing GoodAuschwitz
Book:We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Picador Classic
Create image

“The piled-up dead of political violence are a generic staple of our information diet these days, and according to the generic report all massacres are created equal: the dead are innocent, the killers monstrous, the surrounding politics insane or nonexistent...The anonymous dead and their anonymous killers become their own context. The horror becomes absurd.”

PoliticalViolenceInformationHorrorEqualInnocentAbsurdInsaneThese DaysDietsReportsKillersMonstrousMassacresStaplesGenericPolitical Violence
Author:Philip Gourevitch
Create image

“In 1933-34, the Belgians conducted a census in order to issue ‘ethnic’ identity cards, which labelled every Rwandan as either Hutu (85%) of Tutsi (14%) or Twa (1%). The identity cards made it virtually impossible for Hutus to become Tutsis, and permitted the Belgians to perfect the administration of an apartheid system rooted in the myth of Tutsi superiority… Whatever Hutu and Tutsi identity may have stood for in the pre-colonial state no longer mattered; the Belgians had made ‘ethnicity’ the defining feature of Rwandan existence.”

MayMadeStatesOrderPerfectExistenceIssuesImpossibleIdentityMythCardsMade ItAdministrationFeaturesRootedSuperiorityDefiningApartheidEthnicityCensusBelgiansEthnic Identity
Author:Philip Gourevitch
Create image