[REVIEW] Imagining the Congo
May. 12th, 2004 06:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldMy decision not to pursue a PhD in English Literature--at least not for the foreseeable future--means that my future career paths remain open to question. One possible career path that I wouldn't mind, I realized as I finished the book over a meal at the Grad Club, would place me in the position to write books like Kevin C. Dunn's Imagining the Congo: The International Relations of Identity. I know that I'm a layman so far as PoliSci goes, but Imagining the Congo strikes me as a book preeminently accessible to the informed layman as well as to the inveterate PoliSci fan.
Dunn's basic argument is that the ways in which the Congo has been depicted, since the third quarter of the 19th century, has preconditioned the Western treatment of the Congolese state and the peoples of Congo. This treatment exists independently of the facts on the ground, to the notable deficit of the Congolese peoples.
How have the Congolese been treated? Dunn convincingly demonstrates that they have consistently been treated as savages: as cannibals incapable of civilized government; as subjects of indigenous cultures lacking comprehensible languages or sensible social customs; as people entirely uneducated in the value of life or of hard work. The Congo Free State imposed by King Leopold II with the initial assistance of the famed explorer Stanley sought to remedy these innate failings in the Congolese mentality through any means necessary, including mutilation, murder, and outright massacre. Indeed, perhaps as many as ten million people may have died in the Free State. The half-century of direct rule by Belgium that followed the 1908 sale of Congo to the Belgian state by Leopold II involved rather less outright genocide, but just as much repressive formation.
When Congo was decolonized in 1960, the efforts of the country's first prime minister Patrice Lumumba to formulate a new anti-colonial nationalism by referring to the crimes committed by Westerners in the country led to his marginalization and eventual assassination by Western-backed factions. The subsequent Mobutu regime--analyzed by Dunn beginning with the "Rumble in the Jungle" boxing match between Ali and Foreman in Kinshasa in 1974--tried to consciously create an African nation, renaming the country, its cities, and its citizens, imposing a policy of authenticité. This failed owing to the regime's massive corruption, of course. Dunn ends his historical analysis by bringing in the Rwandan crisis of citizenship that precipitated both the 1994 genocide and the 1996 invasion of the Congo, which caused the downfall of Mobutu, the rise of the Kabilas, and the militarization of much of central Africa in a nasty civil war killing millions.
(For comparison, see the Foreign Affairs review of Imagining the Congo.)
Dunn argues that traditional foreign-policy analysis has relied too heavily on formal documents, on the addresses of diplomats to international fora and on governmental white papers. This is all well and good so far as it goes; however, in an era where foreign policies are determined by public participation, a study of public attitudes and the factors creating these attitudes is essential. Dunn raises the example of how, in the mid-1980s, Paul Simon--by bringing the Zulu vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo into his top-selling 1986 album Graceland--may have done far more to shape attitudes towards apartheid than a half-dozen leading Western statesmen. Why, then, not study Paul Simon?
Heading back to my own career concerns, I truly do believe that, sensibly applied, the techniques of literary criticism--dissecting a text in a search for the motives of its composers, examining a text in the context of the audience to determine its reception--can be massively useful in bringing forth underlying motivations. This may be excessively Cartesian and/or modernist of me, but I think that there are origins which need to be brought to the forefront in any number of situations, literature and foreign-policy analysis included. The critical eye's what's needed.
Dunn's basic argument is that the ways in which the Congo has been depicted, since the third quarter of the 19th century, has preconditioned the Western treatment of the Congolese state and the peoples of Congo. This treatment exists independently of the facts on the ground, to the notable deficit of the Congolese peoples.
How have the Congolese been treated? Dunn convincingly demonstrates that they have consistently been treated as savages: as cannibals incapable of civilized government; as subjects of indigenous cultures lacking comprehensible languages or sensible social customs; as people entirely uneducated in the value of life or of hard work. The Congo Free State imposed by King Leopold II with the initial assistance of the famed explorer Stanley sought to remedy these innate failings in the Congolese mentality through any means necessary, including mutilation, murder, and outright massacre. Indeed, perhaps as many as ten million people may have died in the Free State. The half-century of direct rule by Belgium that followed the 1908 sale of Congo to the Belgian state by Leopold II involved rather less outright genocide, but just as much repressive formation.
When Congo was decolonized in 1960, the efforts of the country's first prime minister Patrice Lumumba to formulate a new anti-colonial nationalism by referring to the crimes committed by Westerners in the country led to his marginalization and eventual assassination by Western-backed factions. The subsequent Mobutu regime--analyzed by Dunn beginning with the "Rumble in the Jungle" boxing match between Ali and Foreman in Kinshasa in 1974--tried to consciously create an African nation, renaming the country, its cities, and its citizens, imposing a policy of authenticité. This failed owing to the regime's massive corruption, of course. Dunn ends his historical analysis by bringing in the Rwandan crisis of citizenship that precipitated both the 1994 genocide and the 1996 invasion of the Congo, which caused the downfall of Mobutu, the rise of the Kabilas, and the militarization of much of central Africa in a nasty civil war killing millions.
(For comparison, see the Foreign Affairs review of Imagining the Congo.)
Dunn argues that traditional foreign-policy analysis has relied too heavily on formal documents, on the addresses of diplomats to international fora and on governmental white papers. This is all well and good so far as it goes; however, in an era where foreign policies are determined by public participation, a study of public attitudes and the factors creating these attitudes is essential. Dunn raises the example of how, in the mid-1980s, Paul Simon--by bringing the Zulu vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo into his top-selling 1986 album Graceland--may have done far more to shape attitudes towards apartheid than a half-dozen leading Western statesmen. Why, then, not study Paul Simon?
Heading back to my own career concerns, I truly do believe that, sensibly applied, the techniques of literary criticism--dissecting a text in a search for the motives of its composers, examining a text in the context of the audience to determine its reception--can be massively useful in bringing forth underlying motivations. This may be excessively Cartesian and/or modernist of me, but I think that there are origins which need to be brought to the forefront in any number of situations, literature and foreign-policy analysis included. The critical eye's what's needed.
