Imagining the Congo: Identity and international relations

This study examines the role of state identity in the international relations of the country currently known as the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Congo Free State, Belgian Congo and Zaire). It focuses on four historical periods: (1) the colonization and creation of the Congo at the end of the 1800s by Belgian King Leopold II and his colonizing agents; (2) decolonization and the American, Belgian and United Nations' intervention in the "1960 Congo Crisis"; (3) the transformation of the Congo to "Zaire" and the construction of a "Zairian" national identity by President Mobutu Sese Seko in the 1970s; (4) the Congo's civil war at the end of the twentieth century, involving several armed factions and intervention by numerous neighboring states.; The study argues that it is impossible to adequately understand the nature of the current conflict in the Congo without exploring the cumulative effects of the production and conflict over the Congo's identity. Using a discursive analysis approach, the study explores the identity discourses articulated and circulated in a diverse array of texts, including governmental reports, speeches, documents, journalism, travel literature, academic treatises, fiction, and film. The study concludes that images of the Congo have shaped external actors' cognitive frameworks and thus have determined their relations vis a vis the Congo. Western actors have repeatedly employed imagery of chaos, barbarism, and savagery in their creation of the Congo. The study finds that these images have legitimated the conquest, colonization, and brutalization of the inhabitants; the assassination of a democratically-elected leader and the imposition of a dictatorship; the extraction of valuable mineral resources; and non-intervention in the current civil war. The study also considers efforts by Congolese actors to counter and resist externally-imposed visions of the Congo, through actions such as the armed rebellions of the 1960s and 1990s, Mobutu's creation of Zaire, and the use of new media technologies. The study finds that these efforts have had limited success over time.