The Violence of Order: Mudime's 'The Invention of Africa'

by Theresa M. Senft (The Invention of Africa is online here.)

We are living in an historical moment in which the question is raised, again and again, "Why Colonialism?" In his book, The Invention of Africa, V.Y. Mudimbe summarizes the most popularly defended answers to this question. The first answer, which might be called the Irrationalist Claim, suggests that colonialism has been some kind of historical accident, a "largely unplanned and, as it turns out, a transient phase in the evolving relationship between more and less developed parts of the world." According to Mudimbe, "Those who hold to this theory argue that on the whole, colonialism was not the worst thing that could have happened to the black continent."(2)