All are welcome to attend today's talk from Aalyia Sadruddin as part of the Social Anthropology Seminar Series.
Abstract
“In this talk, I present insights from my current book project, “After-After-Lives,” which is an ethnographic account of aging in Rwanda. Inspired by the Kinyarwandan phrase, kuzanzamuka (coming back to life after death), I narrate the experiences of Rwandans whose adulthoods were interrupted by numerous violent events, including civil war and genocide, between the late 1950s and mid-1990s. Where adulthood overlapped with violence, late-life has been characterized by a period of relative political calm, making it the only phase of the life course in which members of this generation have lived in the absence of violence.
By focusing on these contrasting yet connected set of experiences, I illustrate not only how women and men oscillate between the past and present, but also how they carry out affective and pragmatic therapeutic practices of recovery with members of the younger generation. For example, many who are meant to be enemies because of longstanding ethnic differences build new civic and kinship bonds through the giving and receiving intimate bodily care, helping each other to prepare for death, and participating in local forms of artistic expressions.
Referred to by many as ibihe ibisanzwe (ordinary time), the present emerges as a critical moment in contemporary history for Rwandans to piece back together the connective tissue of society, as well as to formulate their own lexicon of aging, time, and the body at the individual and collective levels. In an era where aging is perpetually viewed through a lens of “crisis,” the words, gestures, and experiences of Rwandans open new avenues to consider how endings are transformed into beginnings.”
Speaker Bio
Aalyia Sadruddin is a Cultural and Medical Anthropologist whose research focuses on demographic transitions (especially as they relate to aging), local cultures of health and wellbeing, and emergent biomedical technologies in postconflict settings, with a special focus on Rwanda. Sadruddin earned her BA in Anthropology from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and her PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Yale. Her research has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, as well as fellowships from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brown. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Cultural and Medical Anthropology at UNC-Chapel Hill.