Fraiture, Pierre-Philippe. (2009) Mudimbe's fetish of the West and epistemological utopianism. French Studies, Vol.63 (No.3). pp. 308-322. ISSN 0016-1128

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Abstract

This article will provide a close reading of Mudimbe's early collections of essays L'Autre Face du royaume (1973) and L'Odeur du pere (1982). In the English-language exegesis of Mudimbe's writings, these two key teats have been unduly neglected in favour of The Invention of Africa (1988), an essay which, from a chronological point of view; coincided more conveniently with the advent of the postcolonial 'turn'. I will however contend that these two collections offer a rare combination of revolutionary idealism and early postcolonial methodology. I will also argue that Mudimbe's erudite exploration of Western knowledge on sub-Saharan Africa in these two books, albeit somewhat fetishizing in relation to the 'West' and its purported oneness offers more than a meta-philosophical exercise and assessment of Africa's intellectual dependency. Mudimbe's engagement with Foucault's archaeology is a strategy to advocate an epistemological and hence political revolution which reaffirms Mudimbe's filiation with anticolonialist utopianism and Sartre's philosophy of subjectivity.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PQ Romance literatures
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts > French Studies
Journal or Publication Title:	French Studies
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
ISSN:	0016-1128
Date:	July 2009
Volume:	Vol.63
Number:	No.3
Number of Pages:	15
Page Range:	pp. 308-322
Identification Number:	10.1093/fs/knp094
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Access rights to Published version:	Restricted or Subscription Access
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/17529

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