Interlude

The interlude attends to the concept of “reintegration,” or demobilization, whereby LRA rebels leaving the frontlines were to be reformed to live in peace among civilians. It highlights the ways in which civilians and NGO workers conceptualized rebels as animals needing to be humanized and the ways in which rebels, in turn, resisted this disciplinary process. It shows that rebels did not want or need to have their heads “repaired.” Rather, it was civilians for whom “reintegration” was ritually healing, allowing them to heal their own sicknesses by projecting them onto rebels. Whereas reintegration offered to cleanse rebels through the pure concept of “humanity,” the interlude acts as a dirtying process of dis-integration, rejecting the healing offered by “humanity.”