When Life Demands Release

Abstract

This chapter examines the limits of repair when the violence does not stop. Over the past two and a half centuries of violence in eastern Congo, so much has been lost: progressive time, the promise of social reproduction, a sense of belonging in the global community, all in addition to the lives cut short. Drawing heavily on Achille Mbembe and Frantz Fanon, this chapter asks whether violence can be therapeutic in this context. Through an analysis of children who stop eating, youths who taunt death, and armed groups who commit massacre, this chapter explores how killing, or making die, fits into a shared present in eastern Congo. It asks, are there ways in which violent refusal of the current order might beget an emphasis on tomorrow, on durable healing?