The sun has set conclusively on Prof V. I Mudimbe, one of the earliest strikers in counter-hegemonic Philosophy, with particular reference to the constructedness of Africa. He died April 22nd, 2025 at 83.
The prodigious producer of many texts is today most signified by his boo: The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge. As early as 1988, the Belgian trained Philosopher from Zaire who made the US his base for years had published the book which has become the central referent of his scholarship by others in the context of the representational practice of power dimension to the struggle for Africa’s liberation.
In disciplinary terms, Mudimbe was beyond location in any one of them. He was at home in Literature, Linguistics, Philosophy, History, Politics, Geopolitics and cultural studies. It could be argued that like all of them in that temporal category, the literary gaze was a transdisciplinary gaze, much wider than core social sciences, although a Mazrui and Okello Oculi, for examples, were a challenge to this claim by scripting literature from Political Science. That generation was a complicated one.
The gender conscious late Pope
His death will witness the rebirth of this key text in the context of the textuality thesis and the knowledge/power argument in the forms in which Foucauldian scholars, deconstructivists, Edward Said followers and decolonialists are brewing it.
It is impossible to dismiss the temptation to make a connection of the proximity of Mudimbe’s death to Pope Francis’s. even from the physical distance between them, the twosome were very close personages as far as emancipation is concerned. Pope Francis’s January 2023 visit to DRC and enactment of the scenario involving Jesus Christ driving out traders and hustlers from the Church remains remarkable and stands shoulder to shoulder with Mudimbe’s concerns with Africa.
Intervention will keep an eye on tributes to him in the days ahead!
