title: La chicote comme symbole du colonialisme belge?
creator: Dembour, Marie-Bénédicte
subject: 8. Belgium and colonial justice
subject: 3. Violences and maintenance of law and order
subject: 6. The colonial magistrates
description: The whipping of African prisoners during the Belgian colonial period is a common theme for artists of the Zairian urban popular school. Their paintings, frequently referred to in contemporary academic literature on the former Belgian colony, are used here as a starting point for an analysis of the discourse of former territoriaux regarding their use of the whip in their colonial administrative functions. After reviewing the different arguments which they present to justify this practice, I question the "weight" which was/is given to whipping in the colonial world. I argue that the pictures reduce colonial reality to an image which, although not false, does not reflect the range of possible reactions towards it. In the final analysis, the paintings cannot merely be used as a condemnation of colonialism which does not take into account post-colonialism.
date: 1992
type: Article
type: PeerReviewed
identifier:   Dembour, Marie-Bénédicte  (1992) La chicote comme symbole du colonialisme belge?  Canadian Journal of African Studies/ Revue canadienne des études africaines, 26  (2).   pp. 205-225.      
relation: http://www.just-his.be/eprints/7305/