Living Presence in Postcolonial Congo: A Comparison between the Narrative Evocations of Ancestral Spirits in Jacques Bergeyck’s Het stigma and Sony Labou Tansi’s La vie et demie

Abstract

The literary production that emerged from mid-century Congo reflects the cultural importance of ancestral spirits in the region and the different possible perspectives on that. In Sony Labou Tansi’s La vie et demie (1979), for instance, dead characters possess an agency that resembles that of living beings (see Clark). They use this power to intervene in political matters and steer the life courses of their progeny. Het stigma (The Stigma, 1970), a novel by the Belgian missionary and anthropologist Jacques Bergeyck, who worked in Congo before the country gained its independence, was published around the same time. Bergeyck’s novel also engages with the spirituality of the Congolese people, but from a Western, colonialist point of view. The tension between the Catholic conversion project of the missionary and the ancestral veneration honored by the community he lives in dominates the story (see Van Uffelen). In their entangling of the realm of the spiritual and the political, the novels project two very different future views onto Congo.