A Nervous State: Violence, Remedies, and Reverie in Colonial Congo
Nancy Rose Hunt is Professor of History at the University of Michigan, and the author of the prizewinning A Colonial Lexicon: Of Birth Ritual, Medicalization, and Mobility in the Congo, also published by Duke University Press.
The two-state heuristic missed much ambling and vernacular motion. Kitawala moved into chiefdoms; after its banning, chiefs used medical censusing to entrap Kitawala. A range in security tastes is suggested: the agitated visions of a Kimbanguist in Ekafera; a Befale nurse, disturbed by Ekafera and prone to peddling in sorcery and exam scores; a famous Rumba star, Henri Bowane, caught stealing a phonograph; and the banning of a French song about colonial nervousness. The fondness of 1954 Congolese writers for the brass band of the suicidal officer of 1902 also open music and hedonism as a theme, as does looking...
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