Overview

Achille Mbembe is one of the most brilliant theorists of postcolonial studies writing today. In On the Postcolony he profoundly renews our understanding of power and subjectivity in Africa. In a series of provocative essays, Mbembe contests diehard Africanist and nativist perspectives as well as some of the key assumptions of postcolonial theory. This thought-provoking and groundbreaking collection of essays-his first book to be published in English-develops and extends debates first ignited by his well-known 1992 article ""Provisional Notes on the Postcolony,"" in which he developed his notion of the ""banality of power"" in contemporary Africa. Mbembe reinterprets the meanings of death, utopia, and the divine libido as part of the new theoretical perspectives he offers on the constitution of power. He works with the complex registers of bodily subjectivity - violence, wonder, and laughter - to profoundly contest categories of oppression and resistance, autonomy and subjection, and state and civil society that marked the social theory of the late twentieth century. This provocative book will surely attract attention with its signal contribution to the rich interdisciplinary arena of scholarship on colonial and postcolonial discourse, history, anthropology, philosophy, political science, psychoanalysis, and literary criticism.

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9780520204355

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Reviews

Together, the essays demonstrate the consistent evolution of Mbembe's innovative and unique postcolonial theory. . . . Fueled by his signature notion of the political imaginary, Mbembe sculpts a new language for Africa, one liberated from the confines of the Western universalist scholarly tradition. * Canadian Journal of African Studies * Mbembe is an essayist of fitful brilliance. His breadth of reading is exceptional and his intelligence is quick. . . . This interesting, original, self-indulgent book is likely, to judge from the reactions to Mbembe's earlier essays, to be championed by specialists in the fashionable field of postcolonial studies. But it would be a pity if it were therefore ignored by specialists from other fields, for some of the ideas here are rich in suggestions for further research, notably into such eminently practical and measurable elements of government and life as violence, transfers and allocations, and not only into the forms in which power is represented and in which people become subjects. * African Affairs * Brilliantly written. * International Affairs * Chillingly realistic yet also poetic, On the Postcolony offers the reader a brilliant and visionary tour of postcolonial Africa. Mbembe's innovative and highly original perspective springs from a combination of personal experience and eclectic, multidisciplinary readings in fields ranging from history, philosophy, political science, psychology, and religious studies, to sociology and literary theory. . . . Packed with illuminating insights and innovative theoretical approaches to familiar problems, this work not only redraws the boundaries of African studies and postcolonial studies, but also offers a significant contribution to political theory and philosophy. Certain to have a major impact on many disciplines and sub-disciplines, On the Postcolony, to put it simply, is one of those works that scholars and students must add to their libraries. * International Journal of African Historical Studies *

A masterpiece of rhetorical and discursive styles . . . a landmark text not just in terms of the thematic of African colonial and postcolonial realities, but more significantly, about the forms through which this thematic is to be methodologically refracted. --Ato Quayson, African Studies Review

Author Information

Achille Mbembe lives in Cape Town, South Africa. He is the author of three books published in French, including La naissance du maquis dans le Sud-Cameroun(1920-1960): Histoire des usages de la raison en colonie (1996).

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