Authentically African: African arts and postcolonial cultural politics in transnational perspective (Congo (DRC), Belgium and the USA, 1955--1980)

This dissertation is a project about the role objects, museums and cultural politics play in the creation of identities, whether those be European, postcolonial, African, or diaspora identities. This study explores history beyond the borders of the narrative of the nation-state and demonstrates how stories of identities are constructed at the nexus of various competing attempts at memorialization and political appropriation.;The practical parameters on which this project rests are the study of Congolese material culture, art and history and the uses of these in the formation of cultural politics and identities in a variety of locations and moments, including the decolonization of the Museum of Belgian Congo in Tervuren Belgium, the founding of the Institute for National Museums in Congo/Zaire and the history of the Harmon Foundation and the Congolese art collection at Hampton Institute in Virginia. This project investigates how colonial 'technologies of power' such as museums become political tools for the promotion of the postcolonial state. This question structures our narrative account of Congolese art and cultural heritage from the time of late colonial domination to the politics of memorialization and identity politics of the very recent past. The project explores how successful these strategies were. That is to ask, to what extent does the collection, preservation, and display of ethnic artifacts, or 'national treasures' reflect the needs and concerns of the formation of a national identity? And what role does this same material culture play in the context of African-American political and cultural struggles?...