The reflections presented in this launch issue - as well as the issues in preparation - signal the main orientations of the journal: they come from several disciplines (culture, literature, sociology, political science and law), written in English or French. In its editorial policy, Afroglobe intends to contribute to the production of knowledge about Africa and the world in African languages. That is why the summaries of the articles and the interview in this issue are translated into Wolof (Boubacar Boris Diop, Serigne Momar Sarr), Bamana (Noël Sanou) and Swahili (Michael Okyerefo, Kayamba Tshitshi Ndouba).
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
