Compare the kind of understanding of the Congo that might be yielded by Political Sc ience and Literature. In what ways are these approaches distinct? To what extend to they overlap or illuminate each other?

The disciplines of political science and literature have much to say about the people of the Congo. But equally, the Congo has much to teach scholars of politics and literature. Featuring a complicated history and ethnic makeup, the people of the Congo have produced a wealth of discourse to interest these scholars. By necessity, this paper will be highly selective in choosing the examples of this discourse that best illustrate what can be gained from studying the Congo. These examples will show demonstrate the differences of political analysis and literary criticism, but also show they often share significant methodological features.  Study of the Congo can expand, challenge and sometimes even overthrow the dominant ontological paradigms of political science and literature, demonstrating both their uses and limitations. It can also suggest the rewards of combining certain aspects of the disciplines.

There can be little doubt that the most dominant actor in the Congo over the last half-century has been Mobutu Sese Seko; as Fage describes, he "for some thirty years milked the state as if it were his personal fife". Reflections on Mobutu and the era of his rule are, therefore, central themes in recent Congolese literature and political analysis. The fact that Mobutu spent vast amounts of his country's natural resources on his own personal luxuries is undoubted; but his actions can be seen in very different ways. E.B. Dongalo, a Congolese author, offers a cynical, bitter condemnation of Mobutu in his short story 'The Man'. When referring to the dictator, he uses his extended grandiose title in full several times, to highlight his ridiculous pomposity. He also highlights his moral bankruptcy by describing his activities with prostitutes in lurid detail. Another feature of this text is that it is unspecific in naming the dictator, his assassin or indeed anyone else; even the country is unnamed. It is obvious from the text's descriptions and provenance that Mobutu is the primary target of the satire, but the anonymity of the events give the story a potential universality; a useful device if the story is intended to function as a fable - a warning to other Africans, or indeed anybody else. 

While Dongalo's story seems to place much of the blame for the Congo's troubles on the leader's evil nature, most serious works of political science will seek to uncover more profound causes for the situation. Much political thought of the mid-twentieth century regarding Africa was pre-occupied with the notion of development, or the lack thereof. Violence, poverty and lack of welfare provision could, it was thought, be largely explained by the 'primitive' economic and political structures African nations. If, therefore, African societies could invest sufficiently in industrial production and education, the gap between the North and the South could be rapidly closed. As a counter-weight to this development, sociologists and economists has proposed various views, such as Andre Gunder Frank's 'dependency theory', which largely blame external actors for Africa's 'underdevelopment'. While these important sets of theories draw attention to important issues in African development, they are now largely regarded as 'failed paradigms', as they are perceived to lack the sophistication required to accurately account for what is held to be a more complex reality. 
A more nuanced, subtle explanation of the apparent chaos in the Congo is proposed in Chabal and Daloz’s theory of 'disorder as a political instrument'. To briefly summarise what is complex theory, they argue that the Mobutu's actions are part of "the process by which political actors in Africa seek to maximise their returns on a state of confusion, uncertainty and sometimes even chaos". A potential weakness of this analytical framework is that in explaining the 'logic' behind the corruption Mobutu and others, those actions are in fact legitimatised; or at least the emphasis is not placed on the human suffering caused. Insightful works of literature can help to fill this gap, reminding the reader that just because an action is rational, it is not necessarily a good thing. Barbara Kingslover, for example, gives a vivid description of how a village, and later a nation suffers under Mobutu's kleptocracy.

The above examples might suggest that political science is an objective discipline - hence being scientific - contrasted with the subjectivity of literature. This is rarely, if ever, the case. Some political scientists will make explicit their agendas. For example, Nzongola-Ntalaja's analysis of the Congo seeks to place the events of Mobutu's rule in a broader historical context, as well as evaluating the myriad of factors leading to him acquiring and retaining power. But he does not write purely as a detached analyst:

	"As a Congolese patriot, I cannot be dispassionate or neutral in examining the political history of my country....Thus, in addition to using the historical and sociological methods of political economy, this study has also benefited from my own personal experience as a participant observer" 

Even when an political scientist attempts neutrality, it can be said that he or she must write with certain premises and assumptions; an ideological starting point, and as such their analysis must contain an element of subjectivity, however meticulous and cautious they are. Perhaps there is value in Nzongola-Ntalaja's position: if political science acknowledges that it is a subjective discipline, like literature, then scholars will be able to see more easily the need for critical examination of all texts. 

A fundamental problem with much political analysis of the Congo, and indeed of Africa in general, is that it fails to acknowledge its ethnocentricity. That is, it expects African societies to develop in the same way as Western ones, and for African political events to share the same features of their Western equivalents. This is an issue discussed by Sklar, as he considers the concept of dual authority:

	"In a sense, the modern state is normally one-dimensional. But African states were moulded differently. In Africa, it is normal for auxiliary states to occupy a second dimension of political space behind the sovereign states"

This unique feature of African societies, Sklar argues, adds something new to the field of political science. Without a comparable precedent, it is phenomenon that requires specific analysis of its own; an Afrocentric view which considers African events not in universal terms but in specifically African ones. It seems difficult to sustain a solely relativist paradigm of study for Africa, as that seems to imply that Africans are totally unique and share no common features with the rest of the word's inhabitants - an absurd position. Sklar asserts the value of a 'mixed methodology', giving the work of Robert H. Bates as an example of this because "it combines the universalist presuppositions of both rational choice and classical Marxism with Afrocentric, cultural qualifiers". In a sense, this is also Chabal and Daloz's argument, in that they see African actions as a unique result of unique circumstances that are nevertheless understandable in universal terms.

If a comparison is to be made between the methodologies of political science and literature, it must be recognised that both can be considerably varied. If an analyst prefers, political science can focus on structural factors, encouraging macroscopic, often predominantly economic, analysis. In this instance, politics shares little in common with literature. However, in other cases, the political scientist might prefer a more qualitative approach, perhaps in the Weberian tradition. If this is the case, then emphasis may be placed on analysis of the discourse produced by a society. Close textual analysis may be used to attempt to decode the sets of meanings that are assigned to certain events by individuals are grouped. This sort of analysis is notably similar to much literary criticism; and indeed the study of literature can form an important part of political analysis. Equally, the study of literature often has a political dimension, with the political views of an author, and the social context in which a text is produced both being held to be important factors that shape the production of an artistic text.

A similar point can be made regarding the purposes of literature and political analysis. Literature often has a political agenda. Authors might write to draw attention to a particular injustice, as in Dickens’ portrayal of workhouse conditions, express a utopic or dystopic vision, Orwell’s ‘1984’ being an obvious example of the latter. A text may simply express frustration at political circumstances, as in Armah’s ‘The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born’. Even one written without an explicit political purpose may well express an author’s political views implicitly. Works of political science can be broadly divided into two categories; those which seek to help change a situation, and those which wish merely to analyse it. Elements of Nzongola-Ntalaja’s analysis, for example, have a polemic quality where he argues strongly for what needs to be changed. Other political scientists see advocating certain changes as outside their remit, preferring to comment in an independent a manner as possible. It could be argued however, that most, if not all, political analysis hopes, however indirectly, to be of some use; it seems unlikely that people study political and social theory simply for pleasure. Essentially, literature is rarely totally apolitical, and politics often shares much of the subjectivity of literature.

Perhaps the best way of comparing the disciplines is by considering what one hopes to obtain from them. If an organisation is seeking to carry out some kind development intervention into the Congo, for example, then the knowledge that would help the organisation to plan effectively would be more likely found in political science or other comparable disciplines, such as sociology. This because the organisation is in essence seeking a prediction of what will happen, an understanding of the relationship between cause and effect. As Chabal and Daloz states, "Political analysis is by definition the search for the most plausible explanation of the causes of given political events and processes", and therefore it is the discipline most attuned to speculate on the future.

If, as an alternative example, an individual wished to prepare himself or herself for a period of work in rural Congo, they might find that a different kind of understanding was required. The realities of life in a Congolese village might be better expressed through the artistry of a literary work; the 'feel' of a place, or the aspirations of people, or the emotions of an individual all have more profound meanings than can be explained in terms of social organisation and rationality. To properly understand the Congo, or indeed anywhere, art and science must surely be combined to encompass all elements of the human experience. 

Bibliography

Chabal P & Daloz J-P 1999 Africa Works – Disorder as a Political Instrumen. Oxford: James Currey.

Dongalo, EB 1992 ‘The Man’ in The Heinemann Book of Contemporary African Short Stories eds. Achebe, C and Innes CL. Oxford: Heinemann.

Fage, JD 2002 A History of Africa- Fourth Edition. London, New York: Routledge.

Kingslover, B 2000 The Poisonwood Bible. London: Faber and Faber.

Nzongola-Ntalaja, G 2002  The Congo  from Leopold to Kabila. London & New York: Zed Books

Sklar 1993 ‘The African Frontier for Political Science in Africa and The Disciplines  eds. Bates RH, Mudimbe VY & O’Barr