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Constructing a Kongo Identity: Scholarship and Mythopoesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2016

Wyatt MacGaffey
Wyatt MacGaffey*
Affiliation:
Anthropology, Haverford College
*
wmacgaff@haverford.edu
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Abstract

The past thirty years have seen, particularly in the United States, a transformation in the public image of “Kongo,” an ill-defined entity (a tribe, a kingdom, a culture, a region?) on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa. The efforts of R. F. Thompson, professor of art history at Yale, and A. Fu-kiau, himself Kongolese, have done much to popularize a “Kongo” characterized more by its romantic appeal than by historical or ethnographic verisimilitude. Elsewhere in the Americas, the reputation of “Kongo” has suffered by comparison with “Yoruba,” another historically emergent Atlantic identity, based in West Africa. These identities, and the supposed contrast between them, are products of an increasingly complex trans-Atlantic discourse.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 58 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 159 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2016 

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References

1 Lindsay's defenders excuse his embarrassingly racist perspective by arguing that he meant well. For pro and con, see “Race Criticism of the Congo,” Modern American Poetry: www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/Lindsay/congo (accessed 3 Sept. 2015).

2 I place “Kongo” and “Yoruba” in quotation marks to refer to cultural entities that have been constructed in transatlantic discourses, as opposed to Kongo and Yoruba as they are known to historians of Africa.

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6 For an exhaustive annotated bibliography of all things Kongo, see J. M. Janzen, “Diaspora, Kongo Atlantic,” Oxford Bibliographies in African Studies, www.oxfordbibliographiesonline.com (accessed 3 Sept. 2015).

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9 Ntotila from tota, “to gather,” thus a place where many were gathered together.

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11 Broadhead, “Beyond Decline,” 632–37.

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15 W. MacGaffey, Custom and Government in the Lower Congo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 256–58; L. Monnier, Ethnie et Intégration Régionale au Bas-Congo (Paris: EDICEF, 1971).

16 J.D.Y. Peel, Religious Encounters and the Making of the Yoruba (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000); Matory, J. L., “The English Professors of Brazil: On the Diasporic Roots of the Yoruba Nation,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 41, 1 (1999), 72–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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19 R. F. Thompson and J. Cornet, Four Moments of the Sun (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981). Cornet was responsible for the field research that recovered many of these artifacts.

20 A. Fu-Kiau kia Bunseki Lumanisa, N'kongo ye Nza Yakun'zungidila. Le Mukongo et le Monde qui l'Entourait, Zamenga Batukezanga, trans., Introduction by J. M. Janzen (Kinshasa: Office Nationale de la Recherche et de Développement, 1969).

21 Without realizing that I had invented it, I began to use the word “cosmogram” in 1970 in discussions with R. F. Thompson, who subsequently popularized it. I meant it to refer to improvised marks made on the ground as a setting for rituals. The diagram itself is authentic and represents a concept that must have been current in the nineteenth century, if not before; Ortiz reported it in Cuba, marked with terms in Kikongo, though the interpretation is not the same as Fu-Kiau's. F. Ortiz, Los Instrumentos de la Música Afrocubana, 5 vols. (Havana: Ministerio de Educación, 1952–1955), 3: 166–71; W. MacGaffey, Religion and Society in Central Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 46.

22 This is a common theme in comments on the state of African Art. See Steiner, C. B., “First Word: Discovering African Art … Again?” African Arts 29, 4 (1996): 1–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beidelman, T. O., “Promoting Africa Art: The Catalogue to the Exhibit of African Art at the Royal Academy of Arts, London,” Anthropos 92, 1/3 (1997): 3–20, 9Google Scholar. See also Ranger, T., “Scotland Yard in the Bush: Medicine Murders, Child Witches, and the Construction of the Occult,” Africa 77, 2 (2007): 272–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 N. Schrag, Mboma and the Lower Zaire: A Socio-Economic Study of a Kongo Trading Community, ca. 1785–1885 (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1985).

24 Thompson and Cornet, Four Moments, 41. It is important to mention that Thompson's work on Yoruba culture, art, and belief is much richer, based as it is on thorough personal familiarity; see R. F. Thompson, Face of the Gods: Art and Altars of the African Americas (New York: Museum for African Art, 1993).

25 Downstream from Thompson's original breakthrough, the kingdom has taken on fantastic dimensions. For example: “At its height in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Kongo kingdom stretched from Gabon to Zambia.” B. Martínez-Ruiz, in Radcliffe Bailey: Memory as Medicine, Foreword by Carol Thompson (Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 2011), 186.

26 At: hedgemason.blogspot.com/2013/memorial for tata Bunseki Fu-kiau (accessed 3 Sept. 2015).

27 W. MacGaffey, “Kongo Identity 1483–1993,” in V. Y. Mudimbe, ed., Nations, Identities, Cultures (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 45–57.

28 W. MacGaffey, “The Cultural Tradition of the African Forests,” in J. Pemberton III. ed., Insight and Artistry in African Divination (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000), 13–24.

29 Hersak, D., “There are Many Kongo Worlds: Particularities of Magico-Religious Beliefs among the Vili and Yombe of Congo-Brazzaville,” Africa 71, 4 (2001): 614–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; R. Lehuard, Art Bakongo: Les Centres du Style, 2 vols. (Arnouville: Arts de l'Afrique Noire, 1989).

30 Cuvelier, L'Ancien Royaume, 289–90.

31 H. Vanhee, “Central African Popular Christianity and the Making of Haitian Vodou Religion,” in L. M. Heywood, ed., Central Africans and Cultural Transformation in the Americas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

32 A. Hilton, The Kingdom of Kongo (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 12–19.

33 Bafyòti, “black people,” from fyòta (low tone), “to become dark”; not to be confused with fyóti (high tone), “little.”

34 Thornton, J. K., “‘I Am the Subject of the King of Kongo’: African Political Ideology and the Haitian Revolution,” Journal of World History 4, 2 (1993), 181–214Google Scholar.

35 Mbumba Luangu is also the name of a “nail-fetish,” an anthropomorphic nkondi figure into which nails were driven (Bittremieux, La Société Secrète, 173). An example from eastern Mayombe is in Etnografiska Museet, Stockholm, no. 19.1.1192.

36 Not to be confused with mbùmba (low tone), “a cat”; bùmba, “to copulate”; mbùmba, ” bad breath, stomach reflux”; or mbúmba (high tone), “pottery making”; búmmba, “a trap for porcupines”; and others!

37 F. Bontinck, ed., Diaire Congolais (1690–1701) de Fra Luca da Caltanisetta (Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1970), 111–12.

38 V. W. Turner, Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), 185; W. MacGaffey, Chiefs, Priests, and Praise-Singers: History, Politics and Land Ownership in Northern Ghana (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 71, 102–3.

39 Bittremieux, La Société Secrète, 188. The modifier Lwangu probably reflects the origin of the cult among the Vili, who regard “Mbumba” as one of the oldest bakisi basi, “nature spirits.” See Hersak, “Many Kongo Worlds.”

40 The complexities of Central African rainbow mythology are examined in L. de Heusch, Le Roi de Kongo et les Monstres Sacrées (Paris: Gallimard, 2000), ch. 12.

41 Thornton, J. K., “The Development of an African Catholic Church in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1491–1750,” Journal of African History 25, 2 (1984): 147–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 T. Rey, “Kongolese Catholic Influences on Haitian Popular Catholicism,” in L. M. Heywood, ed., Central Africans and Cultural Transformation in the Americas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). De Heusch was wrong to assert that in Haiti vodou and Catholicism existed side by side without merging; that was not even true at any time in Congo itself. De Heusch, “Kongo in Haiti: A New Approach to Religious Syncretism,” Man 24 (1989): 290–303CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 M. Augé, Le Dieu Objet (Paris: Flammarion, 1988).

44 W. MacGaffey, “Twins, Simbi Spirits and Lwas in Kongo and Haiti,” in L. M. Heywood, ed., Central Africans and Cultural Transformation in the Americas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 211–26; De Heusch, “Kongo in Haiti,” 292.

45 For a well-researched but overstated study, see J. Ringquist, “Kongo Iron: Symbolic Power, Superior Technology and Slave Wisdom,” African Diaspora Archaeology Network, Sept. 2008 Newsletter. At: http://www.diaspora.illinois.edu/news0908/news0908-3.pdf (accessed 31 Aug 2015).

46 Ben-Amos, P., “Symbolism in Olokun Art,” African Arts 6, 4 (1973): 28–31, 95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; H. J. Drewal, J. Pemberton, and R. Abiodun, Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought (New York: Center for African Art, 1989).

47 Thornton, J., “African Dimensions of the Stono Rebellion,” American Historical Review 96, 4 (1991): 1101–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 J. M. Janzen, Lemba, 1650–1930: A Drum of Affliction in Africa and the New World (New York: Garland, 1982).

49 S. Palmié, Wizards and Scientists: Explorations in Afro-Cuban Modernity and Tradition (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 162–68; MacGaffey, Religion and Society, 171–75.

50 Janzen, Lemba, 187–88; ba Mampuya, R. Batsikama, “A Propos de ‘la Cosmogonie Kongo,’” Cultures au Zaire et en Afrique 4 (1974): 239–64Google Scholar.

51 A. Fu-Kiau kia Bunseki, African Cosmology of the Bantu-Kongo (New York: Athelia Henrietta Press, 2001).

52 Batsikama, “A Propos,” 254.

53 My translation. This fragment is a cry of pain; the verbs the poet uses are very heavy. In the original: “Nzolele vaika/ Ku mbazi, bu mbweni miezi/ Mu sengumuna/ Mu tendula/ Mu yalumuna/ Ye mu saasila/ Kwa zindinga ye makanda/ Mayatuikwa kwa bakulu. Lu bayinda, minyundudi miakedika, luyindula!”

54 For examples, S. Cooksey et al., eds., Kongo across the Waters (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013).

55 L. Bittremieux, Mayombsche Idioticon (Ghent: Erasmus, 1922–1927), s.v. diyilu.

56 Muntu weti fwa va kimosi ye ndiamunu a ntangu, mu mfwilu yoyo, weti butuluka ku mpemba ye tatamana zingu nate ye nuna mpe. Bu kameni nuna weti fwa diaka ye butukulu mu nza. Fu-Kiau, N'kongo, 30. The saying Fu-Kiau uses to support his idea of cosmic circulation, Nzungi, nzungi nzila, “Man circles on the path,” is a mistaken version of the song Nsongi, nsongi nzila, “The guide, who shows the way,” sung while a nganga leads a client across a boundary.

57 The same belief has been reported among the Vili; Hersak, “Many Kongo Worlds,” 622.

58 MacGaffey, Political Culture, ch. 8.

59 Thompson, Flash of the Spirit (New York: Vintage, 1983) 108–9, quoted by T. J. Desch-Obi, “Combat and the Crossing of Kalunga,” in L. M. Heywood, ed., Central Africans and Cultural Transformation in the Americas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Martínez-Ruiz, in Radcliffe Bailey, 187.

60 R. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 156–57.

61 W. MacGaffey, Modern Kongo Prophets (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), 159–74.

62 J. M. Janzen, “Renewal and Reinterpretation in Kongo Religion,” in Cooksey et al., Kongo across the Waters, 141.

63 See, for example, Bittremieux, La Société Secrète, 210–14. Kimpa Vita was burned alive.

64 MacGaffey, Modern Kongo Prophets, 180–88; W. MacGaffey, “Kimbanguism and the Question of Syncretism in Zaire,” in T. D. Blakely et al., eds., Religion in Africa (London: James Currey, 1994), 241–56.

65 J. R. Young, Rituals of Resistance: African Atlantic Religion in Kongo and the Lowcountry South in the Era of Slavery (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007), 8.

66 K. Mann and E. Bay, Rethinking the African Diaspora (Portland: Frank Cass, 2001).

67 Matory, “English Professors”; J.D.Y. Peel, “The Cultural Work of Ethnogenesis,” in T. Falola, ed., Pioneer, Patriot and Patriarch: Samuel Johnson and the Yoruba People (Madison: African Studies Program, University of Wisconsin, 1993).

68 M.-J. Kouloumbu, Histoire et Civilisation Kongo. Publication de l'Association Mbanza Kongo pour Culture (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2001). But see also the numerous publications of Patricio Batsikama ba Mampuya, grandson of R. Batsikama.

69 G. Buakasa, L'impensé du Discours (Kinshasa: Presses Universitaires du Zaire, 1973).