Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-r7xzm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T23:35:09.674Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

Conclusion: ‘The Return of the Unhomely Scholar’

Get access

Summary

‘Reading Mudimbe’, argues Kai Kresse, ‘means engaging in an intellectual space where African studies just cannot happen in splendid isolation from other disciplines, in disjunction from the European history of the study of humanities’. Indeed, V. Y. Mudimbe conjures up the image of a fabulously inquisitive reader sifting and collating data across disciplines. The adverb ‘fabulously’ is used here to reiterate the author's belief that essays and exegeses are also fables, that is, attempts to translate what can, at best, only be transformed. His presence at the intersection of several ‘libraries’ bears witness to his ambition to read Africa as an insider but also as an outsider, thereby rejecting simplistic racial, ideological, but also theoretical affiliations. In Les Corps glorieux, he remarks in this respect that the motto Etiam omnes, Ego Non [I shall do and think it even though everybody does otherwise] (CG, 20) has helped him from an early age onwards to value personal freedom above everything else, a stance which resonates with Fanon's ‘Je suis mon propre fondement’ in Peau noire, masques blancs. This posture has two immediate consequences. First, Mudimbe can sometimes appear as the devil's advocate who would, for instance, celebrate Lévi-Strauss's and Foucault's interventions but also, at other moments, dismiss their writings as fables about fables and denigrate the over-generalising propensity of their claims. This critical stance has also enabled him to re-open ambiguous ‘texts’ such as Bantu Philosophy, Une Bible noire, and Pierre Romain-Desfossé's tutelage of Katangese artists and read them as an epistemologist, that is, away from a certain form of political correctness which would tend to measure the past, and past critical positions, with instruments developed in the present. Mudimbe is an avid reader and a prolific writer and the critical brand of erudition that he has developed over the years, in fact since the beginning of his career, has been a vehicle to demonstrate that Africanism, an amorphous field that nonetheless gained scientific legitimacy and contours towards the end of the colonial rule, has always been coloured by racial assumptions. He has therefore contended that statements and texts about sub-Saharan Africa during the colonial period were defined and shaped by the conditions of possibility of their production.

Type
Chapter
Information
V. Y. Mudimbe
Undisciplined Africanism
, pp. 182 - 189
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Print publication year: 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×