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

10. Defiances of the Dead

218 10 · DefiancesoftheDead Speaking for the first time of things never seen, . . . this language carefully hides that it says only what has already been spoken. —Michel Foucault, Death and the Labyrinth Storms’sAfricansouvenirsremainedinhiswidow’spossessionuntiltheearly 1930s. As Boris Wastiau comments, by then they had become “family relics, metonymsofthedeceased, . . . therebyimplyingnew‘rituals’ofremembrance and devotion”—to Henriette Dessaint Storms and her family and friends, that is, rather than to the people who had made or used the objects and from whom the lieutenant had seizedthem. The ongoing “social lives”of the things seem to have left any such possibilities far behind. The general’s collections were donated to the Royal Museum of the Belgian Congo in response to the efforts of Frans Cornet, head of the RMCB’s Moral, Political, and Historical SciencesSection,whichwasdedicatedtomemorializingBelgianaccomplishmentsintheCongo .AsMaartenCouttenierreports,thesectionwasfounded in1910tocounterinternationalcriticismofatrocitiesoftheCongoFreeState. A “glowing” revisionist image featuring “the colony’s ‘intellectual and moral development’towards‘progress’”would downplay or simplyignore “negative aspectssuchas . . . forcedlabor,mutilations,rapesandmurdersthatoccurred during the economic exploitation of ‘red rubber’ and the violent military occupation.”1 Defiances of the Dead · 219 Cornet’s approaches to colonial families of “the heroic period” were sometimes met with resentment, for “‘the poignant memories, [and] the stoically endured sufferings’” of early officers seemed betrayed by the indifferenceoroutrightoppositionofmanyBelgianstothecolonialproject .Madame Storms seems to have shown no such reticence. Cornet promised her that he would write a biography of her late husband, and perhaps her decision was made easier as a consequence. The book was never written, however, for reasons that remain unclear.2 A Memorial Room, now known as Gallery 8, was created at the RMCB in the early 1930s as a “Congolese Pantheon” within an inner-court arcade. The names of fifteen hundred Belgians who had given their lives in central Africa or who had provided significant service to the colonial enterprise in its early years were inscribed on a wall. Beneath these, photographs from the museum’s Propaganda Service depicted “progress” in the Congo between the earliest years of Belgian intervention and the 1930s. Other photos mounted around a portrait of Léopold II contrasted housing, crafts, and ritual activities that were believed to be typical of “Negro life” in the Congo with images of the “‘perfection of the current medical services and the importance and beautiful organization of the mine exploitations.’”3 “Primitivity ” versus “progress.” An ivory bust of King Albert I was placed adjacent to these displays after his death in 1934. In an alcove framing the sculpture of the regretted monarch , an eye-level plinth held a bust of Edmond Hanssens, an army captain who died in the Congo in 1884 after two years of service with Henry Morton Stanley, during which he was responsible for outposts from the Atlantic well up the Congo River. Directly opposite was a gleaming white bust of Émile Storms by Marnix d’Haveloose, donated to the museum in 1930 by Storms’s widow.4 That this memorial was in such close proximity to the king’s suggestedrecognitionofthelieutenant ’scontributionstoproto-colonialhistory; and that the busts of Hanssens and Storms were placed either side of that of the king’s “represented the occupation of Central Africa” from west and east coasts, respectively.5 A “White Line” had been drawn across the “Dark Continent ,” however much in afterthought. The materials of Gallery 8 as presented in 2010 allow us to guess something of how Storms wished to be remembered and how curators and his publichaveinventedhimovertheyearssincehisdeathin1918.Inthecorridor perpendicular to the alcove still occupied by the bust of Storms stands a 220 · Remembering the Dismembered lighted vitrine holding mementos of Bwana Boma (fig. 10.1).6 Rustic matting covers the ceiling, back, and floor of the case, suggesting adventures in exotic places. A watercolor portrait of the lieutenant by James Thiriar is the centerpiece of the display, which includes clothing and other effects seen in the picture as well as several scientific instruments, a central African drum, and asmalloilpaintingof“TheStrauch,”thesailboatsoproudlycraftedbyStorms to ply the waters of Lake Tanganyika. James Thiriar was a noted Belgian illustrator who specialized in depicting historic military uniforms and battle scenes of the World Wars and who occasionally designed costumes for the Brussels opera.7 In his picture of around 1930, Le lieutenant É. Storms en 1885, Thiriar portrayed Bwana Boma asabittheZouave,abitapirateofPenzance.Aredfezrideshighonthebrow, its jaunty tassel behind the ear (fig. 10.2). The subject sports an impressive beard and exuberant mustachios. He wears an open-necked shirt beneath a tight, white...