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The Production of Social Space as Artwork 241
generally regarded as complicit in suppressing the subjectivity of the Congolese
people.
Working with a variety of grassroots organizations, Le Groupe
Amos employs a number of devices, such as pedagogy for its projects on literacy
and nonviolence. With regard to politics it uses public interventions
in various media to transmit its message within the urban neighborhoods of
Kinshasa and more broadly beyond the immediate locus of the city. These
interventions manifest themselves as forms of direct action targeting speci-
Wc deWcits within the political, social, and cultural economy. The actions
can be in the form of a theatrical production organized with local actors
(housewives, workers, young students). Other activities of the group involve
didactic teaching material, essays, commentaries, and cartoons published in
newspapers, pamphlets, posters, and magazines. Along with these it publishes
books, teaches clinics, and organizes workshops on democracy and democratization,
governance and citizenship, tolerance, civil disobedience, and gender
equality. The group also produces radio broadcasts, theater, and audio
and short video documentaries taking advantage of the endless reproducibility
of the media works as a way to reach communities in other parts of
the vast country. This form of direct intervention into public discourse is
unique and in many ways novel. Its most recent work has increasingly focused
on the work of reconciliation among warring factions of different Congolese
rebel movements. In this capacity it was invited as a participant/observer
from forums of the Congolese civil society organizations to the peace conference
on the Congolese civil war hosted by the South African government
in 2002 in Sun City, South Africa. One could rightly say that there is a
proselytizing dimension in the way it employs dominant media strategies to
reach a wide variety of publics in its work.
Previously, I pointed out the degree to which language plays a formidable
role in the activities of the group. With a large segment of the population
being illiterate, Le Groupe Amos is aware that for its work to have a
direct consequence within the Weld into which it intervenes, it would need
to be conscious of the language of its discourse. In this case their work maintains
a critical awareness of the social and class divisions perpetuated through
the mastery of the colonial language. Its tactic is not to disavow French,
which is the language of ofWcial discourse, but rather to empower the vernacular
languages (e.g., Lingala, Swahili) as a tool of popular discourse. In so
doing the group seeks to decapitate the class distinctions between those who
occupy the space of power and therefore are perceived to possess discursive
authority and those on the margins of power who lack a voice. Of the latter
class, women are the most vulnerable to the distortion of power relationships
that deWne the chaotic and impoverished character of the Congolese. Thierry