Add BookmarkOn the Postcolony (Studies on the History of Society and Culture)
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 igni... (show more)
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. (show less)
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A highly theoretical book on Africa in the colonial and post-colonial eras. The author is concerned with how intellectuals talk and think about Africa, and argues that their discourse is mostly irrelevant to the "subject" (which he also deconstructs). Large parts of this book are dedicated to the ideology of colonialism and the violence it inflicted (and still inflicts), to the influence that colonial systems (which were always brutal) had on the postcolony, and the ways in which ... (show more)
A highly theoretical book on Africa in the colonial and post-colonial eras. The author is concerned with how intellectuals talk and think about Africa, and argues that their discourse is mostly irrelevant to the "subject" (which he also deconstructs). Large parts of this book are dedicated to the ideology of colonialism and the violence it inflicted (and still inflicts), to the influence that colonial systems (which were always brutal) had on the postcolony, and the ways in which individuals continue to suffer due to these legacies. Some of this book is difficult to read due to the graphic nature of some of the episodes of violence that have occurred and continue. One chapter uses a series of cartoons to discuss the horrors some are subjected to by their leader. A very good book but I may have to re-read it to understand the finer points. (show less)
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didn't dig it. somehow missed the connection between "loud farts" and "fecal matter" hearkening "feasts of food and drink". so many metaphors that the good ones were buried in the great leaps of association. the foundational points were well taken, but i got lost in the Aesthetics of Vulgarity. too interpretive for my tastes.
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