University of Groningen
Congoism
van Hove, Johnny
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Publication date: 2017
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van Hove, J. (2017). Congoism: An archeology of Congo discourses in the United States from 1800 to Present. University of Groningen.
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Propositions
for the dissertation
Congoism
An Archaeology of Congo Discourses in the United States from 1800 to the Present
by Johnny Van Hove
1) Through the “Congo”, a term used in many texts by (African) American intellectuals over the last two hundred years, (African) American intellectuals have produced, disseminated, and reproduced a set of historically contingent semanticizations. These semanticizations have entailed systematically re-appearing and socially conventionalized utterances on Central West Africa (constituting
“discourses”). These Congo discourses, which are analyzed here according to a Foucault-based discourse analysis, have provided a normalized language over two centuries for writing about regions called Congo, their geographies, histories, and inhabitants (in both Africa and America). 2) The meaning and the distribution of the Congo discourses within (African) American intellectual communities have been determined to a great extent by what has happened on a socio-political level within these U.S. communities over the last two hundred years. These communities have used the Congo discourses continuously for their internal political, cultural, and social struggles and negotiations.
3) The Congo discourses have varied and changed continuously since the nineteenth century, shaped by the trends and schools of thought that happened to be dominant in (African) American intellectual circles – e.g. Classicism, Romanticism, Social Darwinism, Postmodernism – and whose major epistemic aspects can be traced back in the intellectual Congo texts in question. The impact of these schools of thought within (African) American communities, as well as the above-mentioned ideological struggles and negotiations within these communities, have determined what is known about the Congo, also on the scientific plane.
4) The central epistemic function of the Congo discourses throughout the centuries have been to reject certain Black people (both African Americans and Central West Africans) and the regions they live in, to defame their habits, and to undermine their political convictions. African American intellectuals have thus defended their position in the world by elevating themselves from their “Other”: the Congo.
5) Through the Congo discourses, Black American intellectuals have known themselves to be free, not enslaved; civilized and progressing, not savage and backwards; beautiful and desirable, not ugly and repulsive; and embedded in history, not without history. This overall discursive process is called “Congoism”, which may be defined as the amalgam of truth-producing “Otherings” through the Congo.
6) Many of the historically transmitted topoi and rhetorical and argumentative strategies may have altered or faded, but past discursive habits have not disappeared. The CongoSavage,
-as-Example, -as-Darkness, -as-a-Resource, and -as-the-Vital have been reproduced from the nineteenth century until the present, albeit in new discursive forms.
