"Violence and Memory offers a retelling of a pivotal episode in Congos bloody history to develop a broader theory of history, memory, and the role of pain and suffering in those stories. From 1963-1965, Pierre Mulele (a follower of assassinated prime minister Patrice Lumumba) led a violent uprising against the US-backed Mobutu government in Kwilu province, bordering Congos capital region in the countrys southeast. Both the actions of the Mulelists and the suppression of the rebellion by the Congolese government, were notably violent, inflicting maximum suffering on the living, the dead, and the land. Emery Kalema explores the dispersal, volatility, and violent reconfiguration of sovereignty within the space of the rebellion, as sovereign power, to let live or to let die, lodged itself in localized sites of violence that could, at any moment, determine the brink between life and death. Kalemas narrative centers on oral histories with survivors who were arrested, tortured, and permanently disfigured by the military. The book explores the physical and psychic scars of the militarys violence, and the effectiveness of its regime of suffering, arguing against its physical and psychic dismemberments in the strongest possible terms"-- Provided by publisher.