Does 'On the Postcolony' break with the colonial library?

Mlamuli Hlatswayo, November 2013

Introduction

This essay takes the position that Achille Mbembe’s On the Postcolony (hereafter referred to as Mbembe’s text) does to a large extent, break with the colonial library. Furthermore, Mbembe’s text offers a critical analysis of postcolonial Africa through the privileging of African subjectivities, and a rejection of dominant modes of representations, which is largely found in Marxism and neo liberal discussions on Africa. Mary Porter argues that Mbembe rejects these simplistic binaries (“West” and “South”, “Developed” and “Developing” etc) and the segmented historical trajectories which not only influence the different modes of representations in Africa, but they are also influenced and informed by the Colonial archive (Porter, 2003: 274).

Open Letter to James Nxumalo, Senzo Mchunu & Jacob Zuma on the Repression in Cato Crest, Durban

To:

James Nxumalo, Mayor, eThekwini Municipality, Durban, South Africa
Senzo Mchunu, Premier, KwaZulu-Natal
Jacob Zuma, President, Republic of South Africa

We are writing to you to express our grave concern at events unfolding in the Cato Crest shack settlement in Durban.

After an illegal eviction in Cato Crest by the eThekwini Municipality in March this year, shackdwellers occupied an adjacent piece of land. They named the settlement “Marikana”. Since then, two activists have been assassinated -Thembinkosi Qumbelo and Nkululeko Gwala. A third, Nkosinathi Mngomezulu, is in critical condition after being shot by the Land Invasions Unit. A number of activists have been seriously beaten by the police. Other activists, including Bandile Mdlalose and S’bu Zikode of the shack dweller movement Abahlali baseMjondolo who have been supporting the residents, have been threatened with death. 

Valentin Mudimbe - Archaeology of Practices of Philosophy in Africa

On African Fault Lines: V.Y. Mudimbe

On African Fault Lines

V-Y Mudimbe’s On African Fault Lines was launched by the Department of Political and International Studies’ Thinking Africa project on Tuesday evening. 

Described by Lewis Gordon as the African continent’s greatest thinker, Mudimbe, is this collection of meditations is concerned with three thematics: Africa’s place within today’s intellectual, economic and cultural configurations; the main axes that structure disciplinary practices concerned with African difference and the possibility of understanding being-in-the-world with reference to alienation, creativity and friendship.

There can be no doubt that On African Fault Lines is a brilliant and intensely thought assemblage of writings Intellectual good faith is the hallmark and true achievement of Valentin Mudimbe’s oeuvre, and it is spectacularly on display here. His good faith approach draws ‘Africa’ into the wide orbit of his thought as much as he draws his sources into ‘Africa’. The signal accomplishment of this book is that it teaches us how to learn.

— Grant Farred, professor of Africana Studies, Cornell University

Violence in/and the Great Lakes: The Thought of V.Y. Mudimbe and Beyond

7 to 9 August 2013

ELRC, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa.

This colloquium is organised by the Thinking Africa project of the

Department of Political and International Studies, Rhodes University, in

collaboration with Grant Farred from Cornell University. The colloquium

reflects on the work of VY Mudimbe using these reflections to consider the

current situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Participants in

the colloquium include VY Mudimbe (Duke, USA), Grant Farred (Cornell, USA),

Gervais Désiré Yamb (Ottawa, Canada), Fabien Eboussi Boulaga (Yaoundé,

Cameroon) Olga Hel-Bongo (Laval, Québec), Justin K. Bisanswa (Laval, Québec)

and Kasereka Kavwahirehi (Ottawa, Canada).

Valentin Y. Mudimbe: Africa remains the absolute difference—An interview

The Idea of Africa

Valentin Mudimbe: In order to understand “Invention of Africa”, we can use a number of entries, levels of interpretations which were made by scholars, journalists and anthropologists, in order to define the specificity of Africa. We have levels of comprehension and understanding the history of the West; its everyday life, practices and its ethno-philosophy, and indeed the practice of disciplines such as history, sociology, theology and the philosophical level in its two dimensions. I distinguish the semiological from the hermeneutic form. The first is understood as the totality of skills and knowledge that allows one to describe what one is seeing in social science. The second as the totality of skills and knowledge that allows one to read meanings. That is the first entry; the levels of interpretation of what is going on in a given society, which thus could qualify Africa as abnormal. We can also see that abnormality or difference, by using a model, the mode of production.

The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge

by V.Y. Mudimbe 

"... groundbreaking... clear, straightforward, and economical.... seminal... " -- American Anthropologist

"This is a challenging book... a remarkable contribution to African intellectual history." -- International Journal of African Historical Studies

"Mudimbe's description of the struggles over Africa's self-invention are vivid and rewarding. From Blyden to Sartre, Temples to Senghor, Mudimbe provides a bold and versatile resume of Africa's literary inventors." -- Village Voice Literary Supplement

"... a landmark achievement in African studies."  -- Journal of Religion in Africa

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)