Cutting the Flesh: Surgery, Autopsy and Cannibalism in the Belgian Congo.

Sokhieng Au

doi:10.1017/mdh.2017.5

Abstract

Within the colonial setting of the Belgian Congo, the process of cutting the body, whether living or dead, lent itself to conflation with cannibalism and other fantastic consumption stories by both Congolese and Belgian observers. In part this was due to the instability of the meaning of the human body and the human corpse in the colonial setting. This essay maps out different views of the cadaver and personhood through medical technologies of opening the body in the Belgian Congo. The attempt to impose a specific reading of the human body on the Congolese populations through anatomy and related Western medical disciplines was unsuccessful. Ultimately, practices such as surgery and autopsy were reinterpreted and reshaped in the colonial context, as were the definitions of social and medical death. By examining the conflicts that arose around medical technologies of cutting human flesh, this essay traces multiple parallel narratives on acceptable use and representation of the human body (Congolese or Belgian) beyond its medical assignation.

Highlights

Within the colonial setting of the Belgian Congo, the process of cutting the body, whether living or dead, lent itself to conflation with cannibalism and other fantastic consumption stories by both Congolese and Belgian observers. In part this was due to the instability of the meaning of the human body and the human corpse in the colonial setting
The attempt to impose a specific reading of the human body on the Congolese populations through anatomy and related Western medical disciplines was unsuccessful
In 1923, the medical chief of the Belgium Congo stated after observing the abysmal failure of colonial training programmes for indigenous medical assistants, ‘One needs not be too surprised that ignorant students, some of whom are direct descendants of anthropophagous parents, do not have the moral qualities. . . needed to be a good indigenous medical assistant.’[1]. A few years later one of the earliest indigenous converts to Protestantism, a man named Nlevmo, related the story of his conversion to Christianity in the Baptist Missionary Herald

Summary

Introduction

Abstract: Within the colonial setting of the Belgian Congo, the process of cutting the body, whether living or dead, lent itself to conflation with cannibalism and other fantastic consumption stories by both Congolese and Belgian observers.

Objectives

Results

Conclusion