1.

Record Nr.

UNISA996247908703316

Autore

MbembeĢ J.-A. <1957->

Titolo

On the postcolony / / Achille Mbembe

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, : University of California Press, c2001

ISBN

0-520-91753-7

1-59734-783-3

9786613520234

1-280-08018-3

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (284 p.)

Collana

Studies on the history of society and culture ; ; 41

Disciplina

302.3/096

Soggetti

Power (Social sciences) - Africa

Postcolonialism - Africa

Subjectivity

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Original title: Notes provisoires sur la postcolonie.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 245-269) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Introduction: Time on the Move -- 1. Of Commandment -- 2. On Private Indirect Government -- 3. The Aesthetics of Vulgarity -- 4. The Thing and Its Doubles -- 5. Out of the World -- 6. God's Phallus -- Conclusion: The Final Manner -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Achille Mbembe is one of the most brilliant theorists of postcolonial studies writing today. In On the Post-colony 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 postcolonial 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 Post-colony," 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 postcolonial discourse, history, anthropology, philosophy, political science, psychoanalysis, and literary criticism.