Violence and memory: The Mulele "Rebellion" in post-colonial D.R. Congo
Date
2017-02
Authors
Kalema, Emery Masua
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Abstract
Between 1963 and 1968, Pierre Mulele, previously Minister of National Education in the first
post-colonial government of the Democratic Republic of Congo, led a rebellion in Kwilu
province against the Congolese government. Strongly opposed to the new form of colonialism
expressed in the “Belgo-Congolese dream,” Mulele took up arms to change the order of things.
This thesis is about the suffering caused by this rebellion, the reproduction of this suffering
across time, and its inscription in the imaginary of the survivors and, indirectly, the Congolese
state and various political regimes in power in Kinshasa from the 1960s to the present. It is the
overall question of the “imaginaries of suffering” that drives the analysis: suffering as what
people experienced in the concrete conditions of existence during the rebellion; suffering
experienced by the body during the rebellion; suffering as what the “body” remembers because it
carries visible marks, recognizable by the self and others; and suffering as what leaves marks in
the minds of the suffering subjects. The thesis is also about power, its meaning, and the complex
interplay of forces between power, memory, and suffering. It draws on evidence from archival
materials, oral testimonies, and debates from philosophy, history, anthropology, literary studies,
and medical humanities published over the last thirty years by scholars from Europe, Asia, the
Americas and Africa.
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Citation
Kalema, Emery Masua (2017) Violence and memory: The Mulele "Rebellion" in post-colonial D.R. Congo, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, <http://hdl.handle.net/10539/26756>