A prominent francophone thinker and writer from sub-Saharan Africa, V. Y.
Mudimbe is known for his efforts to bridge Western and African modes of knowledge and for his
critiques of a range of disciplines, from classics and philosophy to anthropology and
comparative literature. The Mudimbe Reader offers for the first time a
ground-breaking work of modern intellectual African history from this essential postcolonial
thinker, including new translations of essays previously unavailable in English.
Constituting an intellectual history of the humanities in the late twentieth century
from an African intellectual's point of view, The Mudimbe Reader provides an introduction
and a comprehensive bibliography that frame four thematic gatherings of Mudimbe's
writings. Part 1 bears witness to Mudimbe's attempts, as a university professor in the new
nation-state of Zaire, to balance the postindependence discourse of authenticity with his
training in Western philosophy and philology. Part 2 focuses on Mudimbe's exploration of
racial, ethnic, and religious discourses to reflect upon postcolonialism in Zaire and in the
United States. In the third part, Mudimbe interrogates ancient Greek and Latin texts as a
strategy to engage the legacy of antiquity for European and African modernity. Finally, the book
concludes by focusing on visual culture and Mudimbe's recurring attempt to elucidate how
African "primitiveness" has been constructed, challenged, dismissed, and reinvented
from the Renaissance to the present day.
Copyright:
2016
Book Details
Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:
9780813939124
Publisher:
University of Virginia Press
Date of Addition:
10/20/16
Copyrighted By:
the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia