This paper adopts a cultural-political approach to transnational activism. It argues that transnational activists, in their discursive activities, simultaneously draw on and construct symbols and experiences available at a transnational level. Within transnational solidarity activism the invocation of “memories of violence” is a recurring feature. The Rwanda genocide in 1994 has become a transnationally shared trauma that is continuously mobilized by contemporary activists, for example in relation to the political and humanitarian crisis in Darfur: e.g. “Not another Rwanda!” Theoretically, the paper utilizes Jeffrey Alexander’s work on cultural trauma and the civil sphere and extends this body of work to the transnational level. Empirically, the paper builds on a large and original set of data on the discursive use of the Rwanda trauma in contemporary transnational activism. The empirical observations allow exploring a key question that remains largely unaddressed in the otherwise expansive literature on transnational activism: How do transnational activists contribute to the formation of a transnational or global society?
