Rémy Bazenguissa-Ganga

Les Ninja, les Cobra et les Zoulou crèvent l’écran à Brazzaville: le rôle les médias et la construction des identités de violence politique

AbstractIn his recently published studies, the author analyzed the development and use of militia groups in the political conflicts that shook Congo-Brazzaville in the 1990s. After briefly reviewing these events, he points up the change in recruiting militiamen that occurred in the last phase of these conflicts. His text is primarily concerned with the role of Western mass culture in shaping the bodies and identities of these militiamen and the militiamen’s sense of identity. From the late 1950s (here the author draws on the research of Georges Balandier) to the late 1990s, the young men of Brazzaville were inspired in constructing a modernity of their own bodies by certain Western action films. The graphic violence in these films, perpetrated by characters whom the young men adopted as their heroes, legitimated their own use of violence.

The Political Militia in Brazzaville

From June 5 to October 15, 1997, three years after the first urban guerrilla battles, conflicts reignited in Brazzaville. The recurrence of confrontation is an appropriate time to examine the social background of the most virulent actors in these battles, the militia. The first guerrillas were principally youths born in Brazzaville, while those of 1997 came from secondary cities. This being the case, it is legitimate to wonder about the dissemination of political violence in the Congo. This paper will reconstitute a chronology of the confrontations, analyze the militia, and explain the entry of Congolese youths into political violence.

Beautifying Brazzaville: Arts of Citizenship in the Congo

The social practices that beautify Brazzaville, the capital of the Congo, partake of the arts of citizenship. They express the way in which the Congolese take part in ruling and being ruled. The reference to the beauty of certain objects initiates them into an aesthetic dimension as it summons a distinctive way of being that belongs to art; they are identified by the fact that they belong to a specific regime of the sensible.1 What I mean by the arts of citizenship are configurations of experience that give rise to ways of feeling and result in specific forms of political subjectivity. I take inspiration here from Jacques Ranciere’s analysis based on le partage du sensible (“the distribution of the sensible”), namely, a “system of self-evident facts of sense perception that simultaneously discloses the existence of something in common and the delimitations within it that define the respective parts and positions within it” (2006: 12).

La dette imaginaire et la confiance dans le milieu des migrants clandestins d'origine congolaise à Paris

Ce texte propose une digression, a partir de la theorie analytique de Christian Geffray, autour du theme de la garantie de la valeur subjective des hommes dans la parole par laquelle ils s’engagent dans la structure de la dette imaginaire. Resumons cette theorie, presentee de maniere eclatee dans differents textes (Geffray, 1992, 1995 et 2001). Christian Geffray articule une reflexion sur la portee de la fonction symbolique dans la vie sociale a partir du phenomene de l’insolvabilite. Ce processus permet, en meme temps, dans des systemes sociaux precis, l’extorsion par le patron du surtravail de ses clients et la construction par ces derniers de leur dignite sociale. La dette se greffe sur des investissements du desir qui se manifestent a la fois dans la construction de l’identite propre et dans l’amour du maitre. Ces analyses se referent, de maniere exemplaire, au marche captif et se concentrent, exclusivement, sur l’articulation, dans le monde capitaliste, des systemes de production et de circulation des marchandises. Le patron assure le role de mediateur entre deux mondes : la ville et le village, le marche captif et le systeme capitaliste, etc. Dans ces marches, Christian Geffray montre que la sujetion repose sur une fiction suspendue a la croyance du client en la parole d’un patron bienfaiteur. La violence, prenant parfois la forme de meurtres de clients, surgit de la ruine de cette croyance qui sanctionne la sortie de ces derniers du « jeu » par la fuite, l’improductivite ou la revendication. Dans Tresors, Christian Geffray donne a sa theorie une portee plus generale en montrant que l’engagement se noue dans differents discours concus comme des formes du lien social. Ce qui lui permet d’opposer deux poles de la vie sociale, la ferveur du serment et des fidelites ou s’attestent la dignite et l’honneur des hommes, d’un cote, et la circonspection des calculs ou se determine la valeur relative des biens, de l’autre.