The Invention of Africa - Exploring the Myths and Ideas that Invented a Continent in V Y Mudimbe's Magnum Opus

What is Africa and what is the meaning of being African? For some, answers to these questions might seem obvious. But the very idea of Africa, in its contemporary sense at least, was not common knowledge until a century ago.

In 1988 V. Y. Mudimbe published The Invention of Africa, a book that would focus more on the idea of the continent rather than its geographical or cultural make up. Mudimbe argued that what we think Africa is, is nothing more than the amalgamation of ideas that were constructed and developed by early Christian missionaries and European explorers, even going as far back as classical Greek thought. The content of these ideas would then be passed down to ethnographers and anthropologists who sought to subsume this body of knowledge under a racialized hierarchy modelled on Darwinian evolution. After this era would come black intellectuals and clergyman from the West Indies and other parts of the Americas who would be next in line to adopt and adapt this knowledge, giving it a much more positive identity and setting in stone the continents Pan African outlook. The last in line to adopt this library, ironically, would be people of the continent themselves, as the twentieth century marked the age when native Africans began to critically assess why they referred to themselves as Africans in the first place.  

V Y Mudimbe

He was finally awarded his doctorate in 1970 by the University of Louvain in Belgium. After this period Mudimbe was offered some important positions back in his home country. He took up fellowships at the National University of Zaire. This tenure helped him fulfil some important pedagogical missions on behalf of Mobutu’s Zairean government. He eventually decided to leave Zaire in 1980 to take up a professorship in comparative religious studies at Haverford College Pennsylvania. It is believed that this migration to the States was a definitive exile motivated by Mudimbe’s refusal to be politically compromised by Mobutu’s regime. It was during the 1970s and 80s that the popularity of topics like gender, race, and postcolonial studies were at an emergence. This academic move was to be acknowledged by thinkers who clearly presented a high knowledge of the subject with recognisable third world credentials.

The discourse on Africa up to this point was dominated by figures such as Basil Davidson, who championed the approach of history as a way of building up a picture of what Africa was. There were other approaches too, particularly the ethnophilosophical route that had African scholars examine indigenous systems of knowledge as ways of breaking into the heart of African culture and its social utility. Mudimbe’s approach would be different from both. His methodology would focus on a term he referred to as ‘African Gnosis,’ borrowing from the Greek word ginōskō meaning ‘to know or knowing.’ Mudimbe uses this as a technical term to encapsulate the vast breadth of knowledge and information that birthed the idea of modern Africa. The main issue here lies in the production of knowledge systems – how one ends up with the very concept of Africa itself. And beneath this simple name is a network of systems and interlacing information, which have contributed to the compression of a whole continent, its peoples, languages, and cultures, into a singular noun entity referred to as Africa. His primary question rest on this remark:

‘To what extent can we speak of an African knowledge, and in what sense?’ (Mudimbe, Invention, 1988).

Mudimbe is interested in pilling back the layers and uncovering the foundations many have held to as simply truths about the continent, its people, and their knowledge systems. Mudimbe sees the continent as a dynamic structure, constantly moving from one epoch to another, a transformation of sorts. And for Mudimbe it is this movement, this process of shifting knowledges that rests at the core of his investigation. It is this knowledge that Mudimbe elicits and critiques, an invented knowledge about a continent that has always been in the process of change and exchange. And regardless of what one might think of the continent – whether the term Africa holds any weight or not – Mudimbe’s insights are something that every person taking the subject matter seriously will have to contend with. 

The First Invention: In The Beginning

To begin with, there’s a brief visit we need to make to Mudimbe’s other important book called the Idea of Africa. In here he writes that:

‘The very name of the continent is itself a major problem. The Greeks named it Libya and used to call any black person an Aithiops. The confusion begins with the Romans. They had a province in their empire known as Africa and their intellectuals used the same word for the … continent as we know it, being the third, after Europe and Asia’ (Mudimbe, Idea of Africa, 1994).

The problem of naming the continent goes back to the way in which the world was being mapped. The discipline of cartography wasn’t just about mapping out landmarks on charts. The idea of spatial information went beyond navigational purposes. Maps were authoritative, especially during the Renaissance period when they became metaphors for territorial power and control. The key elements illustrated would include a general description of the terrain, with limited details concerning fauna and flora, and almost no information about the inhabitants of these lands. For most of these cartographers the world beyond the Mediterranean remained undiscovered and uninhabited. The Latin speaking world called this idea terra nullius, the land of nobody. Blank blotches and incomplete pieces on the maps would reflect these empty lands. Lands could only be recognized and incorporated into the mapping if only a sovereign state had been recognized, and in most cases, recognized states were exclusively European.

‘It is a period remarkable for authorizing and liberating this new form of knowledge, a period that, coming out of the fifteenth century, interprets the world, its virtues, and its evocations according to the expansion of European space, as the planisphere, published by Mercator in 1569, represents’ (Mudimbe, Idea of Africa, 1994).

These maps were essentially the beginnings of what modern Africa would be perceived as. The maps also gave confidence to the papacy. Fifteenth century Catholicism was up against the rise of Luther’s Protestant revolution. The old guard was being challenged by this new form of church praxis. These rising tensions meant that territories which were once controlled by the archbishops of Rome would become Protestant protectorates. The gradual loss of these territories also meant the decline of power. The papacy, realising this predicament, seized the opportunity coming from these newly ‘discovered’ lands outside of Europe to be conquered and brought under the rule of the Church, making this one of the initial institutions to implement early-stage colonialism. Edicts were passed in the form of Papal Bulls, edicts that allowed the Church and any monarch that aligned to the papacy sovereign rule and lordship over these distant lands. Mudimbe writes:

‘It was in God’s name that the Pope considered the planet his franchise and established the basic principles of terra nullius, an idea that denies non-Christian natives the right to an autonomous political existence and the right to own or to transfer ownership’ (Mudimbe, Invention, 1988).    

Figures like Hegel would follow on from this by insisting that Africa was rightfully excluded from humanity because it lacked history. The pejorative ascribed to African societies such as ‘archaic’ or ‘primitive’ stood to represent an ancient organization which had been present in Europe several thousand years earlier. And nineteenth-century anthropology firmly bases its foundation on this hypothesis. The discipline of anthropology expands this body of knowledge by producing ‘scholarly works’ on the principles of human evolution to civilization, in which African peoples were considered the initial indications of baseness. Mudimbe writes:

‘During this period both imperialism and anthropology took shape, allowing the reification of the “primitive.” The key is the idea of History with a capital H, which first incorporates St. Agustine’s notion of providentia and later on expresses itself in the evidence of Social Darwinism. Evolution, conquest, and difference become signs of a theological, biological, and anthropological destiny, and assign to things and beings both their natural slots and social mission’ (Mudimbe, Invention, 1988).

The soldier on the other hand, constituted the most visible figure of the expansion of European jurisdiction. His position allowed him to build castles and forts on the coasts. He took charge of trading posts, took part in the slave-trade, and in the nineteenth century, implemented colonial rule. But for Mudimbe, it is the missionary that remains the most consistent of the prior two. The age of missions is above all the best example of Europe’s most successful mode of imperial expansion. He states that:

‘The more carefully one studies the history of missions in Africa, the more difficult it becomes not to identify it with cultural propaganda, patriotic motivations, and commercial interests, since the mission’s program is indeed more complex than the simple transmission of the Christian faith’ (Mudimbe, Invention, 1988).    

The missionary enterprise needs to be understood in light of all of this, not as an isolated banal practice of early Christianity in Africa. From as early as the sixteenth century all the way to the eighteenth, missionaries were inseparable from the political process of creating and extending the right of European rule over newly discovered lands. This was true everywhere European colonies were established, not just on the continent but in the Americas, Asia, and Oceania too. Mudimbe highlights these factors in the missionary’s enterprise:

‘The missionaries objectives had to be co-extensive with his country’s political and cultural perspectives on colonization, as well as with the Christian view of his mission. With equal enthusiasm, he served as an agent of a political empire, a representative of a civilization, and an envoy of God. There is no essential contradiction between these roles. All of them implied the same purpose: the conversion of African minds and space’ (Mudimbe, Invention, 1988).    

And the missionary mode of operation has been: if we change what is inside (by salvation), maybe we can change what is outside (the savagery). At the heart of both systems is the idea of what constitutes the civilized. It is then the missionary’s journals and recorded activities that begin to constitute a knowledge of sorts, a curriculum that becomes the basis of what follows. It is this knowledge of missionary work – a practice and a language built from an understanding that engages other peoples and cultures as pagan, savage, lost, and uncivilized – that eventually gets adopted by Europe’s proto scientists and anthropologists. During the Age of Exploration the idea about the continent was limited to the description of darkness – a dark continent inhibited by dark people. But as the age of the Enlightenment dawned the term pagan became replaced with more fitting labels such as exotic, inferior, and primitive. Mudimbe says that:

‘From a more general historical frame, one can observe three complementary genres of "speeches" contributing to the invention of a primitive Africa: the exotic text on savages, represented by travelers' reports; the philosophical interpretations about a hierarchy of civilizations; and the anthropological 

search for primitiveness. The complementarity of these speeches is obvious. It is perceived as a unity in the Western consciousness. The exotic text dominates in the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century, it complements Enlightenment classifications of peoples and civilization. In the nineteenth century, an ideology of conquest appears in explorers' sagas,

anthropologists' theories, and the implementation of colonial policy’ (Mudimbe, Invention, 1988).        

And now the continent which had always existed in its own right with thriving cultures and kingdoms that stretched from the desert sands of Mali to the pastoral lands of the Cape was being forced into an identity it never once conceived of – an identity that came with the label Africa, a modern European construct, or as Mudimbe would phrase it, an invention. As the European forces began consolidating their powers and influence around the world a new order would be instituted that would see Europe have an unchallenged economic advantage over most regions around the world. This advantage would be most manifest in the colonies.

The Second Invention: The Colonial Experience  

Africa’s history of the colonial experience signified a major shift and opened new types of discussions on its history, traditions, and cultures. It’s not that African societies weren’t accustomed to foreign influences. The cultural exchange of Africa and the rest of the world had been an ongoing experience since the times of the Stone Age. But what makes this social encounter with Europe different is that the exchange was never mutually reciprocated. Europe’s goal, after several centuries of trying, was to figure out how to penetrate and exploit the latent riches of this vast breadth of land. Given that the slave plantation economy had declined in value (due to the efficiency of factories and industrial machinery), black bodies from the continent were no longer prized property. 

‘To organize and transform non-European areas into fundamentally European constructs’ (Mudimbe, Invention, 1988).

The colonial enterprise manifests itself in three forms according to Mudimbe: 1) The domination of physical space, 2) The reformation of native minds, and 3) The integration of local economic histories into the western perspective. What separates the colonial experience from many other foreign encounters the continent has had is that it relies on a totalising structure – it seeks to completely embrace the physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of the human experience. It limits a certain aspect of reality in order to recreate a new one. One of the effects of colonialism is that it fosters an imaginary understanding of time, mythical-time Mudimbe calls it – as if the continent had been trapped in embryonic form where time and space weren’t concretized.

And therefore it is only when these colonized regions have been properly included into European space and time that an encounter with reality is achieved. And through this colonial structure a dichotomizing system emerges, something Frantz Fanon (the Martinique psychiatrist and theorist) pointed out in his works, an idea he referred to as the Manichean society, borrowed from the gnostic beliefs of first century prophet Mani. In this concept rests a dual nature split between two worlds that don’t necessarily coincide but share the same plane of existence. So for colonized societies these Manichean ideas would play out as traditional versus modern, oral versus written, rural communities versus urbanized cities, subsistence farming versus mass production.

One of the many false narratives of colonialism was of its intentions to improve African societies. But these improvements were solely beneficial to the metropole, the European capital through which all the colony’s resources would be funnelled back. Essentially colonies were of value only if they brought material benefit to the mother country or devised a lucrative economy for the settled colonists. And ultimately the colonial structure finds itself being most effective by what Mudimbe calls the lie of its projected modernity, an idea the Argentine scholar Walter Mignolo also developed in much detail in works such as, The Darker Side of Western Modernity, and On Decoloniality. And this lie of a projected modernity that is accompanied by the colonial structure designates an intermediary space, a space clearly indicative of underdevelopment but professes a strong impression of a modernity that often is an illusion of development. Mudimbe points to the empirical evidence of the declension: the demographic imbalance, severe social and economic disparities, dictatorial regimes, and the breakdown of religious institutions and centuries old identities.

The Third Invention: The Great Intellectual Shift

Many historians will note that the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were the height of imperial rule. But what many teachers of history forget to include are the social revolutions, mainly initiated by black slaves, that took place in these times. The Haitian revolution is the first that comes to mind. The bloody revolution that saw slaves become free men by declaring war against the French order was one of the key catalysts towards an idea of Africa beyond its European formulation. Many who partook in the slave revolt maintained a link to the continent, be it spiritual or cultural. And even though some of these ties bore little resemblance to the cultural reality on the continent, these customs and rituals would prove to be useful for a people whose place in the world had been rejected.

It was this new way that sought to build solidarity with black people everywhere in the world, but particularly on the continent, that drove Africa into its next invention, the invention of its Pan African outlook. Mudimbe dedicates a whole chapter in the book to one particular figure he regards as the progenitor of Pan Africanism.

Edward Wilmot Blyden was born in the Danish island of St. Thomas, now the U.S. Virgin Islands. He was one of the earliest members of the newly established state of Liberia, an annexed piece of land in west Africa preserved by the US for the purpose of relocating emancipated slaves back to Africa. Blyden lived through the Scramble of Africa, he witnessed the arrival of European settlers on the west coast of the continent and observed the growth and eventual establishment of colonial rule. In his time Blyden authored several works, mainly on the subject of the Negro and his place in the world. Blyden developed an idea that would see all black people constituted and organized into a singular entity he referred to as the Pan-Negro ideology. This philosophy is what later gave rise to Pan Africanism. Blyden’s greatest concern was whether the black race, under favourable circumstances, could manage their own affairs.

He also believed in the Christianizing and civilizing mission of the West. He saw it as a necessary step towards Africa’s incorporation into the modern world. Blyden’s view of colonization, particularly under British law, was received in a positive light. He believed the British colonial system was the best model for the promotion of civilization and progress compared to the others. Blyden was an anglophile who believed that colonization posed benefits towards the elevation of African civilization, especially through the English language. For Blyden, like many other Pan Africanists that would follow, racial grouping and solidarity was one of the key components towards building a reputable nation. He believed that Europe’s strong sense of nationalism was driven by an undercurrent of strong racial pride. Mudimbe writes:      

‘Therefore, only Blacks could colonize and reform Africa. By Blacks, he meant “civilized Americans and West Indians of African descent.” Blyden had some strange views concerning slavery, for example his belief that in the first years “it was a deportation from a land of barbarism to a land of civilization” (Mudimbe, Invention, 1988).

‘Moreover, as he grew older, Blyden accepted the partition of Africa by European powers, collaborated with them, and in 1909, worked very hard for the “reconstructing [of] Liberia by the United States”; and indeed for a process of administrative “colonization” (Mudimbe, Invention, 1988).

A key Pan African component Blyden positively articulated was that the black condition was universal. He was convinced that there would be unity and growth in the continent if black people all over the world would reflect on their conditions. And despite his romanticized ideas about the continent and the many inconsistencies he propagated, Blyden's political vision is undoubtedly one of the boldest proposals to elaborate the benefits of an independent, modern political structure for the continent. Blyden’s lasting influence and significance is well summed up here:  

‘Blyden worked on racial issues in the nineteenth century. In order to oppose racist mythologies, he focused on “the virtues of black civilization” and promoted the concepts of “blackness” and “Negro personality,” thus inventing positive new myths about race and the black personality... On the whole, the premises and even the essentials of his ideology were already in the air before he explicated his theses. They had already been used both politically and ideologically by the founders of Liberia and by the Haitian revolutionaries, who at the beginning of the nineteenth century created the first black republic. At the time of Blyden's death in the first quarter of the[sic] century, these same premises were incorporated in W.E.B. DuBois's Pan-Africanist ideology, and in the 1930s they were important in the genesis of the negritude movement in Paris” (Mudimbe, Invention, 1988).

The Fourth Invention: Reimagining Africa

The second World War was one of the greatest paradigm shifts of the twentieth century. The lasting consequences of this conflict did not only affect European nations, it also opened new horizons for what it meant to be African. The war meant that Europe’s imperial forces would gradually lose power and control over the vast territories they controlled around the world. The growing threat of bankruptcy and the irresolvable issue of national debt meant that countries like England, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany and many others, would not be able to afford or maintain their colonies anymore.

Mudimbe argues that socialism had its ideological path into the continent through poets like Aimé Césaire and Léon Damas. And he traces this socialist link back to Sartre’s influence, particularly his heavy-laden Marxism. Mudimbe posits Fanon as a champion intellectual when it comes to Marxism’s synthesis with Africa’s struggle for independence. And since Marx was irrevocably connected to Hegel it made sense that Fanon would include the Hegelian dialect into his discourse of colonialism. Mudimbe writes:

‘His commitment is based on a concrete understanding of the Hegelian dialectic. The alienation caused by colonialism constitutes the thesis, the African ideologies of otherness (black personality and negritude), the antithesis, and political liberation should be the synthesis’ (Mudimbe, Invention, 1988).   

Now having this fervent spirit of liberation, and a timely intellectual climate geared towards revolution, Africa’s newly established states would posit themselves as the heralds of modern African identity. The African state needed to provide peoples of the continent a unified front that traversed tribal lines. And so emerged Africa’s national heritage. The first group of people who wrestled with the tension of African nationalism versus Pan Africanism, ironically  turned out to be those in positions of political power such as  Nkrumah (Ghana’s first prime minster), Julius Nyerere (former president of Tanzania), Haile Selasi (Ethiopia’s emperor), and many other leaders.

The meaning behind the idea ‘to be African’ became formalized and later popularized through cultural concepts like Ujamaa (Nyerere’s concept of communalism, based on the traditional model of the family), Negritude (Léopold Senghor’s movement aimed at cultivating black consciousness), and the state ideology of Authenticité implemented by the Mobutu regime. One might even include Ubuntuism in South Africa. These state sanctioned ideas about Africa would draw from this pool of talent comprised of scholars and cultural leaders to foster a new invention of Africa. These state sponsored programs for building new identities would also include Africa’s literary space. Writers such as Camara Laye, Ferdinand Oyono, Chinua Achebe, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o were part and parcel of this grander scheme of popularising a certain idea about Africa.

At some point the focus shifted more towards the continent’s historicity and its abundant cultural heritage. A notable Kenyan scholar by the name of Ali Mazrui became a key figure in this regard. And when it came to the continent’s scientific and anthropological contributions, the case made by Cheikh Anta Diop’s body of work was rarely matched. Diop shook the foundations of western academia when he published The African Origin of Civilization. The findings he had reached were what eventually led to the commonly held idea of Africa as the cradle of mankind. One of the most dominant definitions of Africa, coming from Africans, would be in the field of religion and philosophy.

And where philosophy is being discussed religion is close by. Many of the philosophical  discussions surrounding Africa and its identity were in sync with those that happened in churches and seminaries. Africa’s theological discussions were inseparable from those happening in philosophy since almost all of the major intellectual figures of this time were either clergyman or ex-priests. People such as Desmond Tutu, Jean-Marc Ela, and Janani Luwum were famous for their critical contributions to the notion of Africanity, but they were first and foremost clergyman. Once the discourse of Africa moved from the philosophical to the theological and then into the political, the total assumption of this word and its ideas wholly became an invention of Africa by those who came to be known as Africans. But Mudimbe remains pessimistic about this so-called African identity or idea of Africa. Briefly, this is what he believes has happened:

‘In effect, in the early 1960s, the African scholar succeeded the anthropologist, the “native” theologian replaced the missionary, and the politician took the place of the colonial commissioner.’ (Mudimbe, Invention, 1988).

Mudimbe’s Limits

The Invention of Africa is an ambitious work. Mudimbe’s ability to push his research into new territories is nothing short of incredible. What makes Mudimbe’s work stand out from most of his intellectual counterparts is that he has a penetrating intuition of how historical ideas manifest themselves. And there hasn’t been many scholars with an intuition as precise as his. Given the quality of his work and the academic rigor it presents one can almost be subsumed by the vastness of the information. But it is also important to take a step back and evaluate the limitations that might come with a work of such high calibre as this. One of the limitations of this book is to do with the arts, especially African music that was produced during the 1980s, a relevant period given that these were the times Mudimbe wrote the book.

The regions of the continent stretching from west Africa to the north and the east were greatly influenced by the religion of Islam. Some of the biggest figures of the Islamic golden age were from Africa. And if African scholars are to be balanced in their criticism of the trans-Atlantic slave trade then they ought to include the Arab slave trade too, a trade that caused just as much damage as the former. Islam has shaped Africa’s story as much as Christianity has, and including this topic into his research would have enriched the book even more. And finally, a huge portion of Mudimbe’s argument is rooted in discussions surrounding the discipline of anthropology. Mudimbe believes that:

‘An anthropologist ‘invents’ the culture he believes himself to be studying’ (Mudimbe, Invention, 1988).

Mudimbe borrows this idea from French post-structuralist Michel Foucault, who criticized the means of knowledge production. Mudimbe also relies on the ideas of French anthropologist Levi-Strauss. One might wonder why Mudimbe relies on these French thinkers to build his argument. Mudimbe believes such thinkers have managed ‘a decentralizing (of knowledge) that leaves no privilege to any centre,’ not even the West itself. And to Mudimbe’s credit, even though he draws much of his methodology from them, it doesn’t seem to impact his overall approach and systematic evaluation of the core concepts analysed. According to Mudimbe, Foucault and Strauss provide him clear paths to think of Africa in new and fresh ways. In fact, Mudimbe considers their contributions so important that he deems their work an intellectual revolution that breaks the fold of how knowledge systems are processed. In his words:

‘Levi-Strauss and Foucault have brought to African consciousness new reasons for developing original strategies within the social sciences’ (Mudimbe, Invention, 1988).

Foucault and Strauss help Mudimbe carve an academic discussion about Africa and its ideas freed from the political and historical forms of inquiry that pervaded the scholarship of his time. Mudimbe wants to talk about Africa philosophically. He says:

‘The pre-independence generation of African intellectuals was mostly concerned with political power and strategies for ideological succession. Since 1960, and more visibly since the 1970s, a new generation prefers to put forward the notion of epistemological vigilance. This generation seems much more concerned with strategies for mastering intellectual paradigms about “the path to truth,” with analysing the political dimensions of knowledge, and with procedures for establishing new rules in African studies’ (Mudimbe, Invention, 1988).

This new generation, driven forward by the likes of Pauline Hountondji, Engelbert Mveng, Kwasi Wiredu and many others, wanted to give Africa a scholarly interpretation freed from the pressures of early state propaganda and cultural hegemony. What most of these African thinkers were doing, including Mudimbe himself, was avant-garde, especially given a time when intellectual concerns were fixated on the idea of power, political power to be precise, rather than a form of intellectual pursuit to know for the sake of knowing. Mudimbe argues that this intellectual pursuit was provoked by a reaction to the ideologies of Negritude, espoused by Senghor and Aime Cesaire, which coupled its ideas of black consciousness with the state apparatus.

It’s not far-fetched to see why his detractors consider him an intellectual hypocrite. I wouldn’t go as far as to consider him that, but the criticism cannot be ignored. The blame isn’t fully on Mudimbe, since he is honest enough to raise the problem. But the issue of western scholarship doesn’t affect him alone. It is a shared problem in all academia. The need to borrow and appropriate western concepts of critique is found throughout the works of decolonial scholars, global south intellectuals, and anti-black social theorists. And when one digs deep enough into who their preferred interlocutors are, one realizes that much of the critique stems from a silent admiration for some western scholar or thinker. Here are some reasons why Mudimbe’s scholarship should not be overlooked even though his methods are based on western thinkers.

• Being the subject of a previously colonized country means the world you inhabit, including all its symbols and signs of relation will be predicated along that logic, reasoning, or as Kant would say weltanschauung (worldview). So it makes sense that most of the viable concepts that can deconstruct these forms of reality will come from the machine itself, the very system that created the problem.

• But going even further – the forms of criticism produced by thinkers of the global south, the decolonial theorists, and social theorists, becomes original in the fact of its merit, quality, and volume. Africans aren’t just borrowing these concepts and using them in the same way Foucault used them, or Sartre. Rather they are being modified, thought through, amended, deconstructed, and even reinvented – adding to the growth of knowledge itself.

Mudimbe states that:

‘The main problem concerning the being of African discourse remains one of the transference of methods and their cultural integration in Africa. However, beyond this question lies another: how can one reconcile the demands of an identity and the credibility of a claim to knowledge with the process of refounding and reassuming an interrupted historicity within representations? Moreover, could not one hypothesize that, despite the cleverness of discourses and the competency of authors, they do not necessarily reveal la chose du texte [the matter of the text], that which is out there in the African traditions, insistent and discrete, determining the traditions

yet independent from them?’ (Mudimbe, Invention, 1988).

Mudimbe Today

It has been more than thirty years since the publication of The Invention of Africa. Many things have changed about the continent, and many others have remained the same. Africa is moving into new inventions whilst still being held back by those inventions of old. Most scholarship on Africa relies heavily on understanding the colonial period and its legacy. But Mudimbe’s unique approach has set him apart from most other scholars. His choice to focus on Africa’s plane of knowledge systems (without undermining the atrocities of colonialism) makes him a refreshing read compared to other scholars. Although The Invention of Africa is considered his most recognized work, Mudimbe does boast a compelling body of work comprised of novels, essays, and numerous articles that expand his ideas even further.

And the continent needs inventions, new and creative paths that will foster better ways of sustaining its societies into the present future. Mudimbe started this conversation many years ago, our question now is to ask how do we join him?  

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Further Reading

Mudimbe, Valentin Yves. The Idea of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994.

Mudimbe, Valentin Yves. The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988.

Mudimbe, Valentin Yves. The Scent of the Father, Essay on the Limits of Life and Science in Sub-Saharan Africa. Translated by Jonathan Adjemian. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2023. Originally published in French as L’odeur du père. Essai sur des limites de la science et de la vie en Afrique Noire. Présence Africaine Éditions, 1982.    

Zubairu Wai. Africa Beyond Inventions, Essays in Honour of V.Y. Mudimbe. Palgrave Macmillan, 2024.

Pierre-Philippe Fraiture (ed), Daniel Orrells (ed). The Mudimbe Reader. London: University of Virginia Press, 2016.