Humanitarianism, Testimony, and the White Savior Industrial Complex: <em>What Is the What</em> versus <em>Kony 2012</em>

Abstract

Thi s article examines two instances of human rights advocacy-Dave Eggers's What Is the What (2006) and Invisible Children's Kony 2012that have attracted a great deal of attention in recent years. It aims to show how the former exposes and challenges the neocolonial assumptions underlying humanitarian campaigns such as Kony 2012 as well as how they are emblematic of different forms of engagement with subaltern testimonies established by humanitarian activists in the postcolonial era. What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng-A Novel constitutes a fascinating and at times confusing instance of literary ventriloquism. It has garnered signiWcant popular and critical interest for its unusual collaborative testimonial account, which, as the subtitle suggests, fuses the genres of the novel and autobiography. The book tells the story of one of the "Lost Boys" of Sudan: children who were made homeless by the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005), which forced them to Xee across vast unforgiving territories before being considered for resettlement in the United States by aid organizations. What Is the What testiWes to Deng's traumatic experiences in war-torn Sudan within a frame narrative centering on a violent robbery he suffers in his Atlanta apartment. While the book has been widely praised, some critics have addressed the perceived shortcomings and Xaws of the product of Eggers and Deng's collaboration. Criticisms of What Is the What concentrate on the issues of voice appropriation, identity erasure, and neocolonial imperialism in relation to the role of testimony in human rights advocacy. As our analysis will reveal, however, the accusations leveled at What Is the What apply much more plausibly to the online video campaign Kony 2012, which went viral in March 2012. The latter is part of an ongoing humanitarian

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