Dancing In The Glory of Monsters

I asked folks for recommendations about a book to read on the wars in Congo, and basically everyone told me to read Jason Stearns' new Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa. And it is, indeed, a tremendous book. This is a very complicated, largely unfamiliar subject that's basically off the radar of the American media and he's managed to produce a genuinely readable and engrossing account. To the extent that it's possible to breeze through a book about a years-long bloody civil war I breezed right through it. Stearns' central conceit, I would say, is an effort to sort of "normalize" discourse about the issue. Many important historical events have involved bloody military conflict and bloody military conflict often features atrocities. But when we talk about Napoleon or the 30 Years' War or whatever else we typically frame these events as important high-stakes political conflicts and not just series of atrocities.

Near the end he critiques some of the Congo-related advocacy efforts in a way that I think reveals his project:

These advocacy efforts have also, however, had unintended effects. They reinforce the impression that the Congo is filled with wanton savages, crazed by power and greed. This view, by focusing on the utter horror of the violence, distracts from the politics that gave rise to the conflict and from the reasons behind the bloodshed. If all we see is black men raping and killing in the most outlandish ways imaginable, we might find it hard to believe that there is any logic to this conflict. We are returned to Joseph Conrad's notion that the Congo takes you to the heart of darkness, an inscrutable and unimprovable mess. If we want to change the political dynamics in the country, we have above all to understand the conflict on its own terms. That starts with understanding how political power is managed.

In a slightly refreshing way, this is the only mention of Heart Of Darkness that occurs in the book, a clear contrast with Michela Wrong's also excellent In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo which directly highlights the Conradian madness element

Interesting reviews here, here, and brief recommendation here. Stearns' blog is here.