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Legitimizing The Invented Congolese Space: The Gaze From Within In Early Congolese Fiction, Kasongo Mulenda Kapanga

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

Postcolonial discourses describe colonization as a process of invention to impose the will of a conquering West on "backward" societies. The will to power conjugated with the need for row materials served as the main catalysts. They put side by side a hegemonic intruder bent on duplicating itself, and a powerless and compliant native unable to react to the blitz of transformations. Hence, the master/slave or father/child relationships that describe the colonial framework. The task is to interrogate these generally accepted assumptions and binary oppositions. Although marginalized, the Congolese native was unwilling to become on object for the colonizer's gaze. …