Achille Mbembe

Bio: Achille Mbembe is an academic researcher from University of the Witwatersrand. The author has contributed to research in topics: Sovereignty & Racism. The author has an hindex of 27, co-authored 109 publications receiving 9281 citations. Previous affiliations of Achille Mbembe include Columbia University & University of São Paulo.

On the Postcolony

Abstract: Achille Mbembe is one of the most brilliant theorists of post colonial 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 post colonial 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 post colonial discourse, history, anthropology, philosophy, political science, psychoanalysis, and literary criticism.

Provisional notes on the postcolony

Abstract: L'exercise du pouvoir dans les etats africains depuis l'lndependance—generalisee ici sous le terme de “post-colonisation”—a ete marque par un penchant pour les ceremonies et par un esprit d'apparat plus surprenant quand Ton considere le caractere et combien illusoire sont des grands travaux realises par ces etats. De plus, le pouvoir est applique a un degre de violence et de pure exploitation dont l'on trouve les antecedents dans les precedents resgimes coloniaux. Le peuple reagit par la voie de l'indecence qui s'exprime dans des festivites obscenes. La question generate est de comprendre la raison pour laquelle ce pouvoir, en depit de ses limites evidentes, a semble-t-il autant de portee. Et plus precisement, pourquoi la population joue-t-elle apparemment le jeu de son gouvernement? Comment peut-elle a la fois se moquer des simagrees de ses gouvernants et toutefois prendre part a leur celebration? L'argumentation soutenue ici, d'apres les faits tires principalement du Cameroon et du Togo, explique que, si l'on centre l'analyse sur les precedes detailles et les rituels de cette concertation, il devient clair qu'il se produit une intimite, un lien presque familial, dans la relation entre gouvernants et gouvernes, ce qui desarme emcacement les deux camps et met le jeu du pouvoir en representation.

African modes of self-writing

Abstract: L’auteur essaie de demontrer qu’il n’existe pas d’identite africaine que l’on peut designer par un seul terme ou ranger sous une seule rubrique. L’identite africaine n’existe que comme substance. Elle se constitue, a travers une serie de pratiques, notamment de pratiques de pouvoir et du soi, ce que Michel Foucault, appelle les jeux de verite, Ni les formes de cette identite, ni ses idiomes ne sont toujours semblables a eux meme. Ces formes sont mobiles, reversibles et instables. Par consequent, elles ne peuvent etre reduites a un ordre purement biologique base sur le sang, la race, ou la geographie. Elles ne peuvent non plus etre reduites a la tradition, dans la mesure ou celle-ci est constamment reinventee.

On the political

Abstract: Since September 11th, we frequently hear that political differences should be put aside: the real struggle is between good and evil. What does this mean for political and social life? Is there a 'Third Way' beyond left and right, and if so, should we fear or welcome it? This thought-provoking book by Chantal Mouffe, a globally recognized political author, presents a timely account of the current state of democracy, affording readers the most relevant and up-to-date information. Arguing that liberal 'third way thinking' ignores fundamental, conflicting aspects of human nature, Mouffe states that, far from expanding democracy, globalization is undermining the combative and radical heart of democratic life. Going back first to Aristotle, she identifies the historical origins of the political and reflects on the Enlightenment, and the social contract, arguing that in spite of its good intentions, it levelled the radical core of political life. Contemporary examples, including the Iraq war, racism and the rise of the far right, are used to illustrate and support her theory that far from combating extremism, the quest for consensus politics undermines the ability to challenge it. These case studies are also highly effective points of reference for student revision. On the Political is a stimulating argument about the future of politics and addresses the most fundamental aspects of democracy that will aid further study.

The Promise of Happiness

Abstract: The Promise of Happiness is a provocative cultural critique of the imperative to be happy. It asks what follows when we make our desires and even our own happiness conditional on the happiness of others: “I just want you to be happy”; “I’m happy if you’re happy.” Combining philosophy and feminist cultural studies, Sara Ahmed reveals the affective and moral work performed by the “happiness duty,” the expectation that we will be made happy by taking part in that which is deemed good, and that by being happy ourselves, we will make others happy. Ahmed maintains that happiness is a promise that directs us toward certain life choices and away from others. Happiness is promised to those willing to live their lives in the right way. Ahmed draws on the intellectual history of happiness, from classical accounts of ethics as the good life, through seventeenth-century writings on affect and the passions, eighteenth-century debates on virtue and education, and nineteenth-century utilitarianism. She engages with feminist, antiracist, and queer critics who have shown how happiness is used to justify social oppression, and how challenging oppression causes unhappiness. Reading novels and films including Mrs. Dalloway, The Well of Loneliness, Bend It Like Beckham, and Children of Men, Ahmed considers the plight of the figures who challenge and are challenged by the attribution of happiness to particular objects or social ideals: the feminist killjoy, the unhappy queer, the angry black woman, and the melancholic migrant. Through her readings she raises critical questions about the moral order imposed by the injunction to be happy.

Spatializing States: Toward an Ethnography of Neoliberal Governmentality

Abstract: In this exploratory article, we ask how states come to be understood as entities with particular spatial characteristics, and how changing relations between practices of government and national territories may be challenging long-established modes of state spatiality. In the first part of this article, we seek to identify two principles that are key to state spatialization: vertically (thestate is "above"society) andencompassm ent (thestate "encompasses" its localities). We use ethnographic evidence from a maternal health project in India to illustrate our argument that perceptions of verticality and encompassment are produced through routine bureaucratic practices. In the second part, we develop a concept of transnational governmentality as a way of grasping how new practices of government and new forms of "grassroots" politics may call into question the principles of vertical ity and encompassment that have long helped to legitimate and naturalize states' authority over "the local." [states, space, governmentality, globalization, neoliberalism, India, Africa] Recent years have seen a new level of anthropological concern with the modern

The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins

Abstract: *Frontmatter, pg. i*Contents, pg. v*Enabling Entanglements, pg. vii*Prologue. Autumn Aroma, pg. 1*1. Arts of Noticing, pg. 11*2. Contamination as Collaboration, pg. 27*3. Some Problems with Scale, pg. 37*4. Working the Edge, pg. 55*5. Open Ticket, Oregon, pg. 73*6. War Stories, pg. 85*7. What Happened to the State? Two Kinds of Asian Americans, pg. 97*8. Between the Dollar and the Yen, pg. 109*9. From Gifts to Commodities-and Back, pg. 121*10. Salvage Rhythms: Business in Disturbance, pg. 131*11. The Life of the Forest, pg. 149*12. History, pg. 167*13. Resurgence, pg. 179*14. Serendipity, pg. 193*15. Ruin, pg. 205*16. Science as Translation, pg. 217*17. Flying Spores, pg. 227*18. Matsutake Crusaders: Waiting for Fungal Action, pg. 251*19. Ordinary Assets, pg. 267*20. Anti-ending: Some People I Met along the Way, pg. 277*Notes, pg. 289*Index, pg. 323