Sex-Ed in the House of Becoming
Apologies for the janky phone photos - it will happen again CW: Sexual violence. Nothing lurid, but the topic is unavoidable if you're talking about sexuality in the '30s Belgian Congo. I talked a big game about micro-blogging, but this barely counts. At least it's focused? Zoe Strother's Humor and Violence: Seeing Europeans in Central African Art is an incredible book, maybe even a perfect book; the quality of the work done in the field almost makes up for the tiny size of Congo Studies today. For this post, I want to spend some time with her discussion of a particular set of carved wooden panels and offer a few comments. Nkanu Nkanda The panels we're looking at are from an nkanda boys' initiation house - Annemieke Van Damme, a Nkanu culture and history expert who has written extensively about the paired gendered initiations of the Yaka-Nkanu-Mbeko cultural complex, introduces nkanda in Nkanu and Mbeko Art and Ritual : "The word nkanda has various...