Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-03T19:19:22.707Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Collective Memory and the Stakes of Power. A Reading of Popular Zairian Historical Discourses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Bogumil Jewsiewicki
Bogumil Jewsiewicki*
Affiliation:
Université Laval
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

For me collective memory is neither a narrative nor collective knowledge of the past (a sort of historical consensus). Contrary to past accounts, be they public or private, memory does not have a narrative form and is thus not of the literary kind (oral or written). Collective memory is above all a semantic code of memorization and of rememorization; it is, as well, a hierarchy of values which structures a discourse in the past while rooting it in the present. Collective memory gives meaning to the past and bears in mind certain places, facts, dates, and persons around which the memory or memories which also legitimate power build themselves. The relationship between a particular remembrance and its basic facts finds its prime meaning here. In this sense collective memory supports and rationalizes collective identity and, contrary to social fiction, offers a “definitive” reading as it bears on real, even though elapsed, relationships. Collective memory thus rejoins and often reinforces fiction and supports role and behavioral stereotypes, etc.

“En ce temps là le roi regardant dans sa maison à Bruxelles il étudiait les nouvelles venant de l'Afrique et dans ses nouvelles plusieurs tribus ont montré que les vivres et les matériaux de travail (n'arrivaient) pas à temps après l'expédition de l'Europe et le Roi Léopold II jetta un coup d'oeil sur l'Atlas (carte géographique) du pays et il dit: on trouvera la route pour faire passer les matériaux de travail, un racourci pour faire le chemin de fer rapidement pour que je puisse envoyer plus rapidement les matériaux en Afrique ainsi on aura pas besoins de porteurs.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 13 , 1986 , pp. 195 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. I wish to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canadian International Development Agency for research grants. This is a major part of a paper presented at the Fifth International Conference of Oral History, Barcelona, March 1985. Marc Dupont translated this paper from French. The analysis is based on some 250 life histories collected during the national competition for the best Zairian life history, organized in Kinshasa in 1985 by the Université de Kinshasa and université Laval de Quebec and directed by myself and my colleagues Ndaywel e Nziem and Sabakinu Kivilu. All life histories cited here were collected on that occasion.

2. Berque, J., “Identités collectives et sujets de l'histoire” in Identités collectives et relations inter-colturelles. ed. Michaud, G. (Paris, 1978), 11–18Google Scholar; Halbwachs, M., La mémoire collective (Paris, 1968)Google Scholar; Vansina, Jan, “Memory and Oral Tradition” in The African Past Speaks, ed. Miller, Joseph C. (Folkestone, 1980), 262–79Google Scholar; Nora, P., “Entre mémoire et histoire; la problématique des lieux” in Les lieux de mémoire, ed. Nora, P. (Paris, 1984), xvii–xliiGoogle Scholar; Yerushalmi, Y., Zakhor. Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle, 1982)Google Scholar; Vidal-Naquet, P., Les juifs, la mémoire et le présent (Paris, 1981).Google Scholar

3. Baczko, B., Les imaginaires sociaux (Paris, 1984).Google Scholar

4. Hobsbawm, E., “Inventing Traditions” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T.O. (Cambridge, 1983), 1–14.Google Scholar

5. Vansina, , Oral Tradition as History (Madison, 1985).Google Scholar

6. Baczko, Imaginaires sociaux.

7. Augé, M., Pouvoir de vie, pouvoir de mort (Paris, 1977).Google Scholar

8. Bourdieu, P., Ce que parler veut dire (Paris, 1982).Google Scholar

9. Vansina, “Memory and Oral Tradition,”

10. Burgos, M., “L'émergence du romanesque dans les histoires de vie paysannes: analyse comparative de trois récits” in Bro, Tud Ha, Sociétés paysannes et dépaysanisation (Rennes, 1983), 149–78.Google Scholar

11. Bertaux, D., Biography and History (Beverly Hills, 1981).Google Scholar

12. For an excellent discussion of this point see Moniot, H., “Profile of a Historiography: Oral Tradition and Historical Research in Africa” in African Historiographies, ed. Jewsiewicki, B. and Newbury, D. (Beverly Hills, 1985), 50–58.Google Scholar

13. Several examples are cited in Nora, “Entre mémoire et histoire.” Also see Kammen, M., “La mémoire américaine et sa problematique,” Le Débat, no. 30 (1984), 112–27.Google Scholar

14. Chrétien, J-P, “Confronting the Unequal Exchange of the Oral and the Written” in African Historiographies, 75–90Google Scholar; J. Bazin, “The Past in the Present: Notes on Oral Archaeology” in ibid., 59-74.

15. Rioux, J.P., Namer, G., and Passerini, L., “Sur la mémoire collective,” Bulletin de l'Institut d'histoire du temps présent, 6 (1981), 29–51.Google Scholar

16. Pomian, K., Ordre du temps (Paris, 1984).Google Scholar

17. Most recently, Lejeune, P., Moi aussi (Paris, 1986).Google Scholar

18. See Thompson, E.P., “Folklore and Sociology,” Sociological Review, 28 (1978), 249–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. Szómbati-Fabian, I. and Fabian, J., “Art History and Society,” Studies in Anthropology and Visual Communication, 3 (1976), 1–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fabian, /Szómbati-Fabian, , “Folk Art From an Anthropological Perspective” in Perspectives on American Folk Art, ed. Quimby, I. and Swank, S. (New York, 1980), 247–91Google Scholar; Jewsiewicki, “The Iconography of Collective Memory,” Anthropology and History, forthcoming.

20. Jacquemin, J-P in Le quotidien entre la mémoire et l'imaginaire, ed. Jewsiewicki, B. (Quebec, 1985).Google Scholar

21. Tshibumba Kanda, “L'histoire du Zaire écrite par un zairois aux années 1980,” MS in my possession.

22. Jewsiewicki, Le quotidien; idem., “Iconography.”

23. I have used a mimeographed copy of this kindly provided me by Bruce Fetter of the Swahili text he received from Yav André in Elisabethville in 1966. The history of Elisabethville was prepared and distributed in the early 1960s by the short-lived association of domestic workers of Elisabethville. For a linguistic analysis see Fabian, J., “Missions and the Colonization of African Languages,” Canadian Journal of African Studies, 17 (1983), 315–34.Google Scholar

24. Ropars-Weuilleumier, M-C, Le texte divisé (Paris, 1981).Google Scholar

25. Again I am grateful to Prof. Fetter for making available to me copies of narratives of industrial workers in Elisabethville. For more details see Fetter, , Elisabethville (Stanford, 1979).Google Scholar

26. Université de Provence, Les intermédiaires culturels. Actes du colloque du Centre méridional d'histoire sociale, des mentalités et des cultures (Aix-en-Provence, 1981).Google Scholar

27. Jewsiewicki, , “Capitalisme par procuration et industrialisation sans entrepreneurs: la petite enterprise au Congo belge, 1910-1960” in Enterprises et entrepreneurs en Afrique, 19e et 20e siècles, II (Paris, 1983), 603–22Google Scholar; idem., “Raison d'état ou raison du capital? l'accumulation primitive au Congo belge,” African Economic History, no. 12 (1983), 157-82.

28. Jewsiewicki, , “Zaire Enters the World System” in Zaire. The Political Economy of Underdevelopment, ed. Gran, G. (New York, 1979).Google Scholar

29. Biaya, T.K., “De l'aube des temps jusqu'alors: l'histoire contemporaine des Luluwa par Nyunyi wa Lwimba” in Etat Indépendant du Congo, Congo Belge, République Démocratique du Congo, République de Zaire? ed. Jewsiewicki, B. (Quebec, 1984)Google Scholar; C. Newbury, “Ebutumwa Bw'Emiongo” in ibid., 35-54; Young, M.C. and Turner, T., The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State (Madison, 1985).Google Scholar

30. Lejeune, P., Je est un autre. L'autobiographie de la littérature aux medias (Paris, 1979).Google Scholar

31. Pomian, K., “Le passé: de la foi á la connaissance,” Le Débat, no. 24 (1983), 151–68.Google Scholar

32. See the 130 songs collected in Tshonga-Onyumbe, “La musique zairoise moderne de 1960 à 1981,” MS at Mbandaka dd 1984.

33. Vansina, Oral Tradition as History.

34. Among others, Goody, Jack, The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge, 1977)Google Scholar, and Meschonnick, H., “Qu'entendezvous par oralité?” Langue française, 56 (1982), 6–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35. Au coeur de l'ethnie, ed. Amselle, J-L and M'bokolo, E. (Paris, 1985)Google Scholar; Jewsiewicki, , “Les pratiques et l'idéologie de l'ethnicité au Zaire: quelques réflexions historiques” in Etat Indépendant, 103–07Google Scholar; idem., “Images et pratiques de l'identité ethnique au Congo belge: la construction d'une culture politique de la ‘modernisation’: réflexions à partir de l'exemple luba” presented at Table Ronde “La dimension historique de l'ethnicité en Afrique,” CRA Université de Paris, 21-22 February 1986.

36. Biaya, , “Kalamba IV Mangole et Nkwembe: histoire, idéologie et politique” in Etat Indépendant du Congo, 66–69.Google Scholar

37. Jewsiewicki, “Zaire Enters the World System;” idem., “Political Consciousness Among African Peasants in the Belgian Congo,” Review of African Political Economy, no. 19 (1980), 23-32; Newbury, “Ebutumwa Bw'Emiongo.”

38. Mudimbe, V.Y., “Culture” in Du Congo au Zaire, 1960-1980, ed. Vanderlinden, J. (Brussels, 1981), 309–98.Google Scholar

39. Badye, Kayamba, “Formation sociale et authenticité au Zaire” in Etat Indépendant du Congo, 107–11.Google Scholar

40. Bayart, J-F, “La revanche des sociétés africaines,” Politique Africaine, 11 (1983), 95–128Google Scholar; idem., “L'hommage à la reine: les modes populaires d'action politique en situations autoritaires,” presented at ECRP Joint Session of Workshop, Salzburg, 13-18 April 1984.

41. Vansina, , “Mwasi's Trials,” Daedalus, no. 111 (1982), 262–79.Google Scholar

42. Certeau, M. de, L'invention du quotidien (Paris, 1980).Google Scholar

43. Kabongo, Ilunga, “Déroutante Afrique ou la syncope d'un discours” in Etat Indépendant du Congo, 13–22.Google Scholar