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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Achille Mbembe and the postcolony: going beyond the text
Author:Weate, Jeremy
Year:2003
Periodical:Research in African Literatures
Volume:34
Issue:4
Pages:27-41
Language:English
Geographic term:Cameroon
Subjects:philosophy
society
politics
literary criticism
About person:Achille Mbembe (1957-)ISNI
External link:http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/research_in_african_literatures/v034/34.4weate.pdf
Abstract:In recent years, across a range of theoretical disciplines, from philosophy to cultural studies, from film theory to postcolonial studies, it has become an elementary assumption that any phenomenon - metaphysical, physical, cultural, conceptual and so on - appears and must appear in the form of text, to be 'read' and interpreted. But why should this be so? The present author examines an emerging voice within postcolonial theory, as a more channeled pathway into the critique of inscriptivism and an initial exploration of what lies beyond it. In his collection of essays entitled 'On the postcolony' (2001), the Cameroonian theorist Achille Mbembe's aim is to think African lived experience and forms of power beyond Western imposed reductivism. Focusing on historical and cultural analyses of West Africa, and Cameroon in particular, Mbembe tries to show how new concepts and forms of writing are necessary in order to capture adequately the complexities of African life. What is significant about Mbembe's project, in terms of a critique of the textual paradigm, is that he occupies an interstitial space somewhere between poststructuralism and existential phenomenology. The present author claims that Mbembe fails in his stated intentions and that his project is theoretically confused and devoid of productive substantial argument. Nonetheless, he also argues that, because of Mbembe's theoretical location, his proposed project of opening up 'another form of writing' for African discourse reveals an ambivalence towards the poststructuralist discourse of the sign, and therefore points the way forward for further research beyond the textual paradigm. Bibliogr., notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]
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