Embodied Histories, Danced Religions, Performed Politics: Kongo Cultural Performance and the Production of History and Authority.

Abstract

This dissertation examines two types of embodied cultural performances, makinu—Kongo dances—and bimpampa, Kongo body gestures, to investigate changes and continuities from the late fifteenth century to the present in the ways that the Kongo people both represent cultural memories and social values through cultural performances, and use these same performances to create, confirm, and contest political and religious authority.

By focusing on the multivalent meanings and uses of makinu and bimpampa over time, I illuminate processes of social transformation that both have been affected by, and have affected, the BisiKongo ethnic group. Based on ethnographic and archival research in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Belgium, I consider everyday interactions in the Kongo Kingdom, conflicts over embodied practices associated with colonial era prophetic movements, enacted theologies in the DMNA church, political animation during Mobutu’s reign, and traditionally-referenced gestures of the Bundu dia Kongo nationalist movement.

This study shows that embodied cultural performances not only are an important means of chronicling Kongo social history, but also play a crucial role in actively making and unmaking authority on a daily basis through social interactions. This dissertation contributes to literature on the anthropology of the body, adds to studies of the relationship between performance and power by focusing specifically on authority and examining the role of coercion and prohibition, challenges notions of a strict separation between ritual and everyday life, and provides comparative information for scholars interested in Kongo history, and its relationship to the development of New World cultures.