Philosophy: "The invention of Africa" ​​finally in French

The cover of the French edition of “The Invention of Africa”, by Valentin-Yves Mudimbe.

© African Presence

Text by: Sabine Cessou Follow |

Sabine Cessou Follow

6 mins

The French translation of the famous essay by Congolese philosopher and writer Valentin Yves Mudimbe, published in English in 1988, is finally released by Présence africaine.

An event book, prefaced by historian Mamadou Diouf, which tells his story.

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The Invention of Africa,

a classic of postcolonial thought, is finally appearing in French, 33 years after its first publication in English. Its author, Valentin Yves Mudimbe, born in 1941, novelist, philosopher and immense scholar, was trained with the good Catholic fathers of the Belgian Congo then at the University of Louvain. In 1979, he left his native Congo, which became Mobutu's repressive Zaire, to teach in the United States. After his famous 

The smell of the father: essay on the limits of science and life in black Africa

(Présence africaine, 1982), he published in 1988 his flagship book, 

The invention of Africa

(Bloomington, Indiana University Press) subtitled " 

Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge 

".

A whole program, of unprecedented amplitude, as “the 

archeology of the production of Africanist and African knowledge 

”. As explained in his preface by Senegalese historian Mamadou Diouf, lecturer in the departments of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies at Columbia University in New York, and director of the History, Politics and Society of African Presence collection, " 

Mudimbe truly engages in a lesson in reading what he calls the" colonial bookstore "".

This is

"made up of all the representations and texts which collectively" invented "Africa as the place par excellence of difference and otherness 

".

In doing so, he attacks " 

with a certain glee at literatures in search of a" vernacular "Africa, of a neopharaonic modernity inaugurated by a triumphant ancient Egypt

 ".

Against the "fetishization of pre-colonial Africa"

In other words, Mudimbe initiates a discussion with Cheikh Anta Diop, author of

Anteriority of Civilizations. Myth or historical truth

?

and the advocates of the “ 

fetishization of pre-colonial Africa and of orality

 ”. He sends the Afrocentrists to the ropes, explaining that their speech is only a reaction in a relationship of domination, but not an emancipated production of knowledge.

Mudimbe questions the production of knowledge about Africa and its historical context, produced by the colonial structure (

colonizing structure

) - territorial conquest, integration of African economies into those of metropolises and reformation of African minds. " 

He considers that even in their criticism of the" colonial bookstore ", Africans do not leave it or with difficulty 

", explains Mamadou Diouf to RFI.

Translation into French has been essential for many years, especially as the “spirit” of the book is part of the traditions of intellectual confrontation and French-speaking African “bookstores”, recalls Mamadou Diouf. His innovative character, which has not aged a bit, comes in his opinion from “ 

the meeting of the French-speaking intellectual culture of Mudimbe with the English-speaking world

.

This book is part of the broad and global reflection, inaugurated ten years after the publication of Orientalism (1978) by Edward Saïd, which had a definite influence on the work of Mudimbe, the work of Gayatri Chakrabarty Spivak, of the Subalterns. Studies and the readjustments and ruptures of African studies opened by the crisis which shakes the Association for African Studies (ASA) in 1968. So many revisions and proposals which provide a space for the reflection of the Global South ”.

A political issue

The stake is political: if the Indians, ex-colonized, can open an intellectual space of their own and, to a certain extent impose their rhythm on studies on India, “ 

there is not much room for Africans in studies on Africa, a continent which remains a sort of intellectual reserve for the West,

”

continues Mamadou Diouf.

In the midst of a “decolonial” debate, those who take the time to read Mudimbe will find inexhaustible resources there, both on the production, circulation, reception and adaptation of colonial discourse as well as of identity narratives.

The two are not pulling on the same string, wonders Mudimbe.

The work takes height on the "colonial bookstore", by examining both its nature and its content.

“ 

It

is presented as the result of varied transactions between worlds that engage each other in a context of domination,”

says Mamadou Diouf.

The essay is based on the transaction, this very important part of the American historical approach, little present in the historical approaches of the empires which think more in terms of resistance, collaboration and alienation.

And this, while the system revolves around a circulation, of a certain porosity between the colonizer and the colonized.

If Orientalism is a Western construction, it has borrowed resources from indigenous cultures, for example

 ”. 

Emancipate oneself for good

VY Mudimbe therefore offers nothing less than intelligent emancipation, to finally get out of this perpetual game of postcolonial ping-pong between accusers and accused. It is rather a question of founding African “humanities” no longer anchored in the relationship with the West, but an Africa inscribed in the time of the world, whose languages ​​trace universals and plural modernities.

Has he succeeded?

Mamadou Diouf's response could not be clearer: " 

This book, which has already produced an important literature, is one of the compulsory readings in all African studies training in the United States

 ".

And that's not all.

Présence africaine will be released, under the title

La Bibliothèque Coloniale en Debate / Debating the African Colonial Library

, a bilingual collective work based on a whole series of questions raised by the work of Mudimbe, who will himself write an article.

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