Who makes whom visible? Excavating eco-visual cultures in DR Congo and its diasporas

Using Congolese artistic modalities as a tool for excavation, this article reflects on narratives around violence, memory, the environment(s) and identity in the Democratic Republic of Congo and its diasporas. I disrupt visibility using what I term the “technologies of race-making,” to simultaneously explain: (1) the functions of a peripheral visuality that flattens and erases our land relations and coerced participation in extractive global colonial and imperialist technological “advancements”; (2) how Congo is (then) reproduced as a volcanic environment; and (3) the erasures of the multi-sense and interior violence of ecocide and genocide experienced in Congo and its diasporas, particularly for, disabled and/or trans/gender expansive and queer peoples. Employing a Congolese and Black African diasporic transfeminist and queer ecological disability justice approach, I contend that marginalized Congolese and Congolese diasporic perspectives are uniquely positioned to understand the interconnected convergence of human-land-animal-plant catastrophes and possibilities within and outside of Congo.