Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

242 Okwui Enwezor
N’Landu, a professor of American literature in the University of Kinshasa
and founding member of the group, describes some of their projects, stating:
Groupe Amos’s commitment to changing Congolese society through nonviolent strategies
is evidenced by numerous inspirational and informative projects. In particular, Amos
has focused on the plight of women in short video documentaries such as Congo aux deux
visages; L’Espérance têtue d’un peuple, 1997; Femme Congolaise: Femmes aux mille bras, 1997;
Au Nom de ma foi, 1997. Et ta violence me scul ta Femme (“Your Violence Made Me a
Woman”), 1997, is a video in Lingala, a vernacular language from Kinshasa, which celebrates
the power of Congolese women who struggle for rights in a context where traditions,
customs, religion, and even existing laws do not facilitate equality. 32
Two things are noteworthy in N’Landu’s statement. The Wrst concerns
the form through which Le Groupe Amos undertakes its work as a
sociocultural activity rather than speciWcally as a visual art activity. This
would lead one to see the group’s work in the broader context of knowledge
production than in that of artistic or visual production. The effectiveness of
direct communication to its audiences leads the group to pursue its work
through the discursive utility of linguistic identiWcation with each of its speciWc
and general audiences. The second point concerns the relationship of
power to the social reproduction of agency and sovereignty, particularly with
regard to women. Here, speciWc critiques of the patriarchal structure of Congolese
society are directed at the customs, traditions, and existing laws that
place women in subservient positions of power. Again, the serviceability of
the Wgure of the authentic has a far more limited purchase than the idea of
the subject, insofar as the status of women is concerned in the Congolese
context. This, again, is articulated as one of the stated intentions of the role
of citizenship and author in the development of new forms of social discourse
of civil society in the Democratic Republic of Congo. José Mpundu, another
member of Le Groupe Amos, in an essay on the future of democracy in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, writes:
Civil society in the situation of this crisis and in view of the resolution of the conXict will
have to reconnect with its primary vocation: to educate the people in order for them to
be able to take charge of themselves on all levels. Civic, political as well as moral education
will make of our people the authors of their history and the masters of their destiny.
Civil society is asked to play a role of primary importance in the process of liberation of
the people. . . . Political liberation, economic liberation, cultural liberation, social liberation:
that is the true struggle of civil society. In order to do so, it will have to help the
people organize in an efWcient manner and to elaborate strategies of social struggle. 33
Having elaborated this quasi-Marxist view of class struggle,
Mpundu, a few sentences later, makes clear the idea that the liberation imagined
by Le Groupe Amos was not just a liberation from the despotism of the
state and its rulers (including the surrogates of Rwanda and Uganda who
occupy the eastern part of the country) but the hegemonic power identiWed