A Dance of Assassins: Performing Early Colonial Hegemony in the Congo

8. Lusinga’s Lasting Laughs

174 8 · Lusinga’sLastingLaughs “A thing itself is a person or pertains to a person” [and] this intimate conjunction of person and things . . . establishes . . . an “irrevocable link” between their donors and recipients, a link with an onerous burden which can even make a gift “dangerous to accept.” —Brad Weiss, “Forgetting Your Dead,” citing Marcel Mauss’s The Gift Thecontinuing“life”ofthe“Lusinga”figureasitstoodonStorms’smantelpiece raises “what if” questions: if the sculpture had remained in Lusinga’s hands— supposing, of course, that the “sanguinary potentate” had managed to hold on tohishead—whatmightithaverepresentedtoand,moresignificantly,donefor thechiefandhispeople?Askingnowdoesreversetheordinaryorderofthings, sincelocallydefinedefficaciesandpurposesobviouslyprecededBwanaBoma’s seizureofthefigure;butifhewasawareoftheseatall,Stormsunderstoodsuch capacities and practices through his own culture and as a function of his own politicalagenda.Hereweshallengageanotherarchaeologyofknowledgebased upon archival materials and exegeses from Tabwa of the 1970s. Among people then living in and around Lubanda, overt use of sculpture had long been curtailed because of intense pressure from Catholic missionaries. Material manifestationsofspiritandagencyremainedimportantnonetheless ,howeverclandestine the praxis was compared to overt ways that sculpture was used in the days of Swift-of-Foot and Bwana Boma. Lusinga’s Lasting Laughs · 175 To backtrack a bit, in the mid-1880s Émile Storms found lands around Lubanda to be “bestrewn with . . . countless small villages, each nearly independentfromtheothers ,andwithoutpoliticalcohesion.”FatherPierreColle estimated that most villages in the area were composed of “five to fifteen houses, for which the chiefs are independent, so to speak,” while the Tabwa ethnographer and Catholic priest Stefano Kaoze added that such chiefs “did not have supreme authority over their inferiors. Here in the Marungu, each individual . . . is independent.”1 Such assertions were echoed by Sultani Mpala, who told me that in the old days, it was kila watu, kila watu—“each groupofpeople,eachgroupofpeople”—withlittlelinkinganyofthempolitically . Lusinga sought to take advantage of such fragmentation as he consolidated his authority following models adapted from eastern Luba neighbors. Despite pretenses of empire as imposed (and improvised) through occasional armed intervention, Jan Vansina has suggested that “even the main Luba kingdom was first and foremost a construction of the mind. Regional communitiesbelongedtoitbecausethey proclaimedthattheybelongedtoit,” and the shared historical consciousness so implied was bolstered through material and performance arts. Even as far afield as where Lusinga operated, emblems and acts could be adopted to reflect “a Luba-inspired concept of ‘civilized life.’” In becoming increasingly “Luba-ized” in this way, to borrow the aptly processual term of Edmond Verhulpen, Lusinga embellished and invented traditions “to establish continuity with a suitable historic past.”2 Indeed,heshouldbeunderstoodas“oneofthose‘giftedindividualswhohave bent the culture in the direction of their own capacities,’” as Ruth Benedict wrote many years ago of the American Indians with whom she worked.3 In Lusinga’s case, one may add “political ambitions” to such “directions” in which culture was “bent.” Among his strategies for self-aggrandizement, Lusinga commissioned a large wooden figure to embody his matrilineage and the dynastic name he sought to establish, as “a visible transition between the visible and invisible worlds”towhichhemightlooktoprotectandpromotehisinterests(seefig.1.2). For this he turned to a carver who was familiar with the eclectic aesthetics of people living west of Lake Tanganyika around the confluence of the Niemba and Lukuga Rivers, who are now understood to be eastern Luba or Hemba.4 Whether the work was created before or after Lusinga “descended like an avalanche ”onlakesidecommunitiesnorthofLubandacannotbeascertained,but the sculpture was meant to proclaim and legitimize his ascending political Figure 8.1. Ancestral figure similar in style and purpose to “Lusinga.” H. 57 cm.; wood, fiber cord, cowrie shell; unknown artist. Collection of Richard and Jan Baum, Los Angeles; photo Jessica O’Dowd, with permission. Lusinga’s Lasting Laughs · 177 stature.StefanoKaozedescribedasimilarcommissionofsculpturebyTumbwe, a politically prominent chief living near the mouth of the Lukuga River well northofLubandawhowas(andis)relatedbyclanandmatrilineagetoLusinga. TumbweacquiredtheservicesofanartistadeptineasternLubastylesandhad a series of ancestral figures carved that were consecrated and shared with his mother’s brother, Kiubwe, as a testament to their close kinship and political affiliation. Kaoze reported that Tumbwe’s figures were destroyed around 1920 by a colonial agent who was disgusted by such “idolatry.” Remarkable figures associated with Tumbwe and related northern Tabwa chiefs do exist nonetheless , most notably in a monumental sculpture in the Katherine White Collectionofthe Seattle ArtMuseum and an equallypowerfulworkin the collection of Richard and Jan Baum of Los Angeles (fig. 8.1). Both are stylistically related to the “Lusinga” figure.5 Lusinga’s use of sculpture was not original, and its large size was in keeping with works by Hemba and other Luba-related peoples...