Memory in Crisis: Commemoration, Visual Cultures and (Mis)representation in Postcolonial Belgium

Abstract

This article analyses the role of visual cultures in debates surrounding memories of the Belgian colonial project and its long-term consequences by focusing on a single case study, Barly Baruti’s and Christophe Cassiau-Haurie’s comic Madame Livingstone: Congo, La Grande Guerre (2014). Focusing on how the image-text represents ‘official’ commemoration versus ‘private’ memories in the context of the Belgian colonialism and the First World War in the Great Lakes region, it highlights how a focus on the visual can also function as a counterproduction of images that emphasise the complex and contested nature of commemoration in a transnational context.