Belgium / Antwerp - The Colonial Self Finally Sees Its Own Atrocity, Proving the Illusion of Historical Innocence

Event Baseline: In 1894, over 100 Congolese people were forcibly exhibited in Antwerp's Congo Pavilion, where seven died; a monument to the victims was unveiled this year.

The Belgian self denied this reality for over a century. It maintained an image of civilized innocence while holding human beings in a cage. Only now does it erect a stone to the dead. The delay is the disease. Proprioception of the colonial body was absent because the thinker needed to preserve its moral purity. A monument is a thought-form. It does not restore the dead. It is the self applauding its own awakening. The real awakening is the death of the colonial self. Until then, the stone is just another mask.