« Vive Lumumba ! »
Ideology, morality, and affects in the archives of the Congolese revolution
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51185/journals/rhca.2023.0503Keywords:
Marxism, global 1960s, student movement, Maoïsm, nationalismAbstract
This article centers on the Union des jeunesses révolutionnaires congolaises (UJRC), a marxist-leninist Congolese student group that, from 1965 to 1968, tried to create a junction between the Congolese student diaspora and the Simba and Mulelist rebellion-revolutions in the Kwilu and Eastern Congo. Based on the analysis of hundreds of archival documents, the article interrogates the UJRC’s relation to Marxism. The work of imagination of the group is interesting to study because it uncovers, together with its tensions and contradictions, an experience of decentered rethinking of revolution, at a time of emergence throughout the third world of various “peripheral socialisms” and “worldly marxisms”. The UJRC experience led to a failure, but its history shows us how a group of Congolese students managed to produce a discourse on Congo that accounted for the country’s inscription within a planetary horizon.
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