Created to conceal foreign exploitation of ivory and rubber, the Congo represented the instrument of an extractive colonization system, before turning violent and paternalistic. The Congo is the most egregious example of the ruthless exploitation of Africans for riches. Its independence came suddenly and unexpectedly in 1960, the peaceful handover of power being marred only by flashes of bad temper and recrimination. Once independent, the country descended into five years of sheer chaos combining mutinies, secessions, rebellions, coups, and a botched UN intervention, followed by several years of stifling arbitrary rule, predation, economic ruin, and civil war.

Understanding the civil war in the Congo requires an examination of how its identity has been framed over time, and this book historicizes and contextualizes the constructions of the country's identity along with its political implications. Are we just who we are, or do others' biased perceptions “construct” us, preconditioning our relationships with outsiders and limiting our capacity to fashion and assert a healthy self-image? This important question constitutes the thrust of Kevin Dunn's endeavor, in which he brilliantly explores and applies the concept of identity as developed in recent international relations scholarship. By means of a fascinating journey through the symbolic and discursive universe that has shaped Westerners' mental images of the Congo, the book examines how the construction of identity can explain the current state of affairs.

Although Dunn claims that his book is neither an exhaustive history of Congolese contact with the “outside world” nor an in-depth study of Congo's political systems, he covers well the historical and political landscape of the country. Focusing on four specific and pivotal historic moments, he sheds “valuable light on the politics of identity in international relations, and on the often brutal encounter between the Congo and the Western World” (p. 17). The first chapter, which serves as the introduction, provides the theoretical background to the concept of identity in international relations. Dunn exposes how Western understandings of the Congo, even in the twenty-first century, rely heavily upon earlier representations generated by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1902). Chapter 2 examines the invention of the Congo as a Belgian “Congo Free State.” It also reviews colonial agents, their behavior, and their attitude toward existing political and social structures and, more importantly, their discourses.

Chapter 3 explores the violent conflict over the Congo's identity as an independent, autonomous entity. Here, Dunn elaborates on how Lumumba's attempt at articulating counterdiscourse on Congolese identity was stymied by his inability to access international discursive space. In fact, Lumumba was perceived as le diable rouge (the red devil) because of his radical and leftist leanings, and these perceptions led to his demise. Chapter 4 thoroughly evaluates Mobutu's reinvention of the Congo into “Zaïre.” Beyond “mere linguistic change, the policies embarked upon by Mobutu's regime constituted an important reimagining of the Congo's identity” (p. 19). Taking advantage of the Cold War environment, Mobutu succeeded in altering his country's image. This chapter shows how “Mobutu and his agents were appropriating Western discourses on sovereignty and the state to justify their power while simultaneously redefining and reinscribing these discourses” (p. 137).

In Chapter 5, Dunn examines recent productions of the Congo's identity as a culmination of past social constructions. To the people's chagrin, “a multiplicity of competing voices has emerged for the authorship of the Congo's identity, from neighboring regional states to armed rebel groups, from Congolese officials to Western governments and organizations” (p. 19). Toward the end, the dying Mobutu tried to democratize Zaïre, but his efforts were too little and too late. Much as the cancer that had ravaged his body, his rule decimated the whole region, if not the continent. The Léopard de Gbadolité epitomized what went wrong in Africa's quest for dignity. His project of cultural reconstitution, fundamental to the mission of nation building, was complex and contradictory. It sought to eliminate the alienations of Western modernity and force a return to the “authentic” and pristine values of a precolonial past, invented through the conceptual registers of colonial anthropology. The contradictions were lamentably obvious since, in the end, culture was to be encrusted in idealized “traditional” practices and values while the state-nation succumbed to the modern corruptions of despotism, decadence, and dependency.

Chapter 6 draws the curtains on Congo's painful burst into existence and its seemingly quiet descent into hell. Its ongoing war provides a moment of rupture that exposes the tenuous and contradictory discursive underpinnings of the Westphalian state system (p. 171). The Congo continues to represent the marker of “evil,” a place of backward “otherness,” and the antithesis to the West, and Mobutu's death and the Kabilas' tenure have yet to change that image. If anything, events in the Great Lakes region promise continuing violence for years to come.

Imagining the Congo is a fantastic study of the political implications of the social and historical constructs of the country, both as a place and an idea. Dunn explores how Westerners since the nineteenth century have defined a large swath of central Africa as a mysterious “heart of darkness” occupied by irrational and childlike people for whom chaos and barbarism are the norm. Despite the efforts of Kabila's son at reconciliation, the stakes seem too high to allow an overall and lasting peace agreement.

Dunn's book gives credence to the aphorism “the pen is mightier than the sword.” This brilliant work demonstrates that Western imperialism's most effective tools for dominating other cultures have been as much literary as political and economic. Although the book at times exaggerates outside influence on the country's social and political discourse, it constitutes a wonderful and well-researched addition to the historiography of the Congo that both practitioners and academics will treasure.