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Mudimbe's fetish of the West and epistemological utopianism
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Fraiture, Pierre-Philippe (2009) Mudimbe's fetish of the West and epistemological utopianism. French Studies, Vol.63 (No.3). pp. 308-322. doi:10.1093/fs/knp094 ISSN 0016-1128.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/fs/knp094
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 | ||||
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Subjects: | P Language and Literature > PQ Romance literatures | ||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > School of Modern Languages and Cultures > French Studies | ||||
Journal or Publication Title: | French Studies | ||||
Publisher: | Oxford University Press | ||||
ISSN: | 0016-1128 | ||||
Official Date: | July 2009 | ||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | Vol.63 | ||||
Number: | No.3 | ||||
Number of Pages: | 15 | ||||
Page Range: | pp. 308-322 | ||||
DOI: | 10.1093/fs/knp094 | ||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access |
Data sourced from Thomson Reuters' Web of Knowledge
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