The Postcolonial Politics of Militarizing Rwandan Women: An Analysis of the Extremist Magazine Kangura and the Gendering of a Genocidal Nation-State

Rwanda has been used by many feminist scholars of international relations as a case study to play out understandings of gender-based violence in war and "civil war." Few feminists have analyzed the mass rape of Rwandan women in the context of a carefully planned and prepared genocide. This article considers the ways in which, in the years leading up to April 1994, the Rwandan nation-state became increasingly militarized and masculinized. It examines the extremist propaganda magazine Kangura's use of cartoons to militarize Rwandan women — not just as wives, mothers and prostitutes — but as political subjects.