A dance of assassins : performing early colonial hegemony in the Congo /

The Democratic Republic of Congo's current troubles stem from acute failures of leadership and governance since independence in 1960. Nevertheless, within the formative historic memory of many Congolese are many colonial atrocities. This book originates with the capture and beheading of an allegedly slave-trading potentate by a Belgian agent of King Leopold II, who had designs on the chief's Tabwa country along Lake Tanganyika and beyond. But the book is not so much about the decapitation of an anticolonial chief as it is about contrasting narratives, Belgian and Tabwa, and about the fate of those narratives in a modern age among younger generations. Anthropologist Roberts (world arts and cultures, UCLA) is also interested in Tabwa forms of dance, Tabwa music and musical instruments and, overall, in the many ways in which the Tabwa received whites, including early White Father missionaries. He is also interested in what happened to the potentate's head, which the Belgian buccaneer carried home as a trophy and as a "stolen soul." Ultimately, this is an excellent, well-crafted meditation on the collision of colonial and indigenous worlds, and how the indigenous world has enfolded and come to its own terms with an irruption that the invading world has largely never understood. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students/faculty. R. I. Rotberg Harvard University