In A Nervous State, Hunt argues that the violent history of the southern Equateur area, part of the former notorious Congo Free State, has contributed to a “catastrophic logic” (1)—elsewhere often described as Afro-pessimism, exemplified by the uniformly dire news reported from Africa. As a way of complicating this negative perspective, which is reflected in historical accounts of the Congo Free State (1885–1908) and later the Belgian Congo (1908–1960), she considers various forms of what she calls latitude—“sizing up, navigating, manipulating the milieu” (253). In her introduction, she lays out her main arguments about both the nervousness of colonial rulers, who used medical and demographic oversight as a way of maintaining control over their colonial subjects, and of the ingenuity of Congolese women and men—evidenced by their movement, imagination, and creativity, their “bantering, jesting, deriding, daydreaming,” and their “biting song” (249)—in the face of these constraints.
In the following...