Afroglobe

Postcolonial thought explores the topic of life concerning what denies it: violence and death. Based on Achille Mbembe’s work, this Issue questions how postcolonial experience remains limited and reducible to the dimension of becoming-object: not dying, maintaining life (Mbembe, 2011, p. 16). As he demonstrates, by freeing itself from the injunction to the past, postcolonial thought attempts instead to elucidate the present's challenges, without denying their historical past; it relies on investigating contemporary challenges in their endogenesis to better prepare for the future. (Mbembe, 2006).

The contributions in this Issue highlight that Mbembe's postcolonial thinking observes the urban and transnational circulation of contemporary African worlds, which have little to do with the stereotypical ideal of pacified traditional societies. For that, postcolonial thinking highlights the itinerancy of cross-border imaginaries, their alchemy or repulsion (migration, war, pilgrimages, mobile telephony, etc.), resulting in practices of permanent reinvention of identities that are undoubtedly unequalled on a global scale (Mbembe, 2020). The various articles in the Issus show that Mbembe's work crosses different moments in both African history and contemporary political thought. His insight appears to be a key moment in the “reading” of the world and the postcolonial, through their multiple expressions. Postcolonial thought is not content to a simple consideration of the African postcolonial moment; it also aims to question the possibilities of the “African futures”, based on a genuine African writing of the self, to think about the Africa to come... Postcolonial thought is therefore both liberating and creative, embodying the universality of both a thought world and Africa.

Table of contents

Achille Mbembe: une pensée de la postcolonie

Delphine Abadie & Ulrich Metende                                        1-18

Comment parler d’Achille Mbembe sans l’avoir lu?

Abdoulaye Imorou                                                                       19-37

Achille Mbembe et l’écriture de l’histoire contemporaine de l’Afrique

Ludovic Boris Pountougnigni Njuh                                           38-51

 Faire de l’histoire de la philosophie avec Achille Mbembe: matérialisme historico-brutaliste et herméneutique critique du signe africain

Thibault Tranchant                                                                      52-81

 Discourir sur Dieu en postcolonie. Lecture de la théologie sous l’arbre de Jean-Marc Ela à l’aune de la pensée d’Achille Mbembe

Ignace Ndongala Maduku                                                          82-101

De Valentin Yves Mudimbe à Achille Mbembe. Des concepts pour renouveler les sciences sociales

Emmanuel M. Banywesize                                                       102-127

 Esthétique du croisement des genres dans l’essai d’Achille Mbembe

Gratien Lukogho Vagheni                                                        128-141