|
|
AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
Show panel list
The eternal child - Oedipus Tyranneus, murder and Congo politics
| Panel |
4. "African Oedipus"
|
| Paper ID | 694 |
| Author(s) |
Konig, Reinhilde Sotiria
|
| Paper |
No paper submitted
|
| Abstract | We all mess up with our lives, sometimes. That is the way human nature presents itself in daily life and in the famous tale of Oedipus, which is used in African literature and in anthropology, theatre productions and philosophical thinking, to make us aware about how the human condition are to be understood. In African politics today and African Diaspora studies it is often the fate of Oedipus’ daughter, Antigone that speaks to our imagination. However, murder in high ranges seems of all places and all times, still we have to think about universalistic and particularistic intentions in a discussion about Oedipus in Africa. I will take the Congo (Democratic Republic of Congo) and her historical and contemporary politics as a point of departure. The Central-African matrilineal belt used to be a fruitful arena for historians and anthropologists alike to project the Oedipus myth upon the king successions and the various tales, narratives and myths of the region. The power struggle by elite women at the 16th Century Congolese court is only recently investigated by Thornton and makes us wonder about the Gender aspect in the discussion about the use of Oedipus in Africa. The last decennia we got all too familiar with the national father figure of a Mobutu Sese Seko, who declared his love for his mother en plein publique, Mama Yemo. His fate, with a father unknown and his two wives a twin, might call for Greek mythological design. In 2001 we were confronted with a murder of the new president Laurent Kabila and a succession of his son Kabila junior. In the Congolese diasporas the rumours are still alive, that the son had killed his father. In my paper I will explore the use of the myth in anthropological literature (de Heusch, Ortiques, Hochegger) and the way African intellectuals like V.Y. Mudimbe deal with it in a diasporical fashion. I shed light upon three Congolese writers. Although they are working in different genres, in the case of the acclaimed writer Henry Lopes, the experimental writer Tabou Lansi and the criminal author Ngoye, they all work with the tropes of unworthy rulers, exile and power struggle. I will apply Sophocles, the language of the family and critical theory. The ‘mess’ I want to make is an anthropological exercise in which I present Europe as the Sphinx and … guess whom as Oedipus.
|
|