These three texts are traversed by one prominent philosophical issue, What is truth?, and by one related epistemological question, What is true knowledge? More precisely, knowledge production, and particularly the factors presiding over the production of knowledge about Africa in and out of Africa, is the major line of inquiry to be identified in these three essays. This epistemological investigation is used as a conduit to explore Africaâs gradual Westernization. Colonial officials and missionaries approached African traditions and customs dualistically, and instrumentalization would often dominate their appraisal of indigenous practices. According to this logic, the integration of Africa into a Western order had to depend upon a strictly selective process that would separate the âwheat from the chaff.â In âWestern Legacy and Negro Consciousness,â Mudimbe reverses the perspective and adopts the same strategy regarding the West and its intellectual input. The question is just as instrumental, as he proceeds to single out Western legacies that could contribute to the decolonization of Africa. In this selection, he is particularly scathing about historians and their claim to produce true accounts. Mudimbe posits that African history is, more often than not, âhistory by analogy,â1 that is, a discipline in which the primacy of European historical experiences dominates African historicity. Mudimbe also regrets the ideological bias of historians such as Endre SĂk, whose âprovincialâ2 reason relies upon a methodology in which Africa is denied its singularity. Thus, by way of history, Mudimbe intimates that the human sciences produce fables and invariably fail to generate universal truths. This idea will be developed in his subsequent books and will constitute the premise of The Invention of Africa.
âThe Rigors of Economicsâ conducts an analogous criticism. Development and decolonization went hand in hand. Newly instituted countries such as Congo-Zaire linked genuine autonomy from the former empire to the creation of strong and independent economic structures, the nationalization of the mining sector by Mobutu being the most concrete sign of this process whereby the UMHK (Union MiniĂšre du Haut Katanga, a Belgian mining company) became the GĂ©camines, on paper a national enterprise which, in reality, became the main instrument of Mobutuâs kleptocratic system.3 Interestingly, Autour de âla Nation,â the collection of essays in which âThe Rigors of Economicsâ first appeared, was published in the Objectifs 80 series, an appellation reflecting the regimeâs ambition to put an end to underdevelopment by the 1980s and engender a much-needed economic dĂ©collage (takeoff). In his review of Jacques Austruyâs Le Scandale du dĂ©veloppement (1965), Mudimbe is able to demonstrate that the regimeâs objectives may not succeed as quickly as anticipated. His main point is epistemological, and he argues, by way of Austruyâs careful demonstration, that development is a Western construct in which a dualistic relationship between developers and âdevelopeesâ is maintained. The main target of his politically committed critique is the econometric reason underpinning development. Despite the rationality of its methodology, econometrics remains a very blunt instrument often used to comply with capitalist (and later neoliberal) agendas defined elsewhere in the rich West by agents of the IMF, âstructural adjustment programs,â and the World Bank, who often fail to abide by their pledge to respect a ânationâs right to economic self-determinationâ (OAF, 79). Here too ideology is shown to have contaminated science.
Political commitment can also be identified in the other two essays. In âWestern Legacy and Negro Consciousness,â there is a sense that the Congolese is a âyet-to-be,â that is, has the ability to act as a free agent and shape the future. Indeed, this article is infused with Sartrean phraseology and perspectives on the emancipation of the Third World. In the late 1960s Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon were widely read, as Mudimbe showed in a survey that he conducted among Congolese intellectuals.4 The focus on authentic Bantu culture is used as a springboard to advocate Sartrean authenticity and overcome, in the name of individual freedom, the ontological stasis inherent in Mobutuâs promotion of a return to authentic (communal) African values.
âA Meeting with L. G. Damas,â on the other hand, serves to challenge persistent myths regarding the centrality of the Senghor-CĂ©saire-Damas trinity during the initial stages of negritude. Damas highlights the role of other individuals such as Birago Diop and RenĂ© Maran. The chiaroscuro portrayal of Damas aptly conveys his disillusionment with some contemporary black intellectuals and their misrepresentation of the ideals underlying negritude. In âWestern Legacy,â Mudimbe refuses to regard negritude as a purely Franco-African phenomenon. Negritude is shown to be the product of a combination of cultural factors and influences from America and, more surprisingly, from Germany. Indeed, he ascribes the emergence of negritude to what Claude Digeon termed âthe German Crisis of French thought.â By that, he signifies that a body of German ideas about the nation and the community was gradually integrated at the turn of the century by French thinkers and philosophers and black intellectuals residing in Paris after the First World War.5 Thus the development of negritude reflects very specific intellectual circumstances and was from the time of its inception conditioned by global debates on race and ethnic identities. Mudimbe announces his ambition to continue the fight of its precursors and to adapt it to the present situation (i.e., to Africa in the 1970s). The pessimistic tone of Carnets dâAmĂ©rique, and its recurrent focus on issues of cultural and racial alienation, are reminiscent of the analyses conducted by Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth.
Let us look more closely at these three essays.
âWestern Legacy and Negro Consciousnessâ resonates with earlier attempts on the part of individuals such as Joseph Ki-Zerbo6 and Cheikh Anta Diop (1955), and more generally with the generations of artists and intellectuals who pioneered PrĂ©sence Africaine, to decolonize black, or ânegro,â culture, historiography, and politics. This early article already displays Mudimbean characteristics. There is a tendency to be suggestive rather than explicatory and to interrogate vast corpora not so much to break down their constitutive elements as to affirm the complexity of the object of study under examination. What is Africa now? is the main issue addressed in this essay. This question, argues Mudimbe, cannot be easily answered, as it is itself subsumed by another more fundamental but equally loaded question: What are civilizations? Mudimbe surmises that if their reality cannot be denied, they are often pliable constructs evoked to serve ideological aims. His reference to Hendrik Brugmansâs Les Origines de la civilisation europĂ©enne is indicative of this tendency. Brugmansâs attempt to define the nature of European civilization does not produce any clear-cut outcome. Like the other historians cited in this article, he merely argues, as Mudimbe points out, that civilizations are recognizable on the basis of âthe existence of certain unifying traits beyond the many divergencesâ (MR, 13), in this instance, the different âheritagesâ (or legacies) underpinning Europe and the West. This statement is hardly conclusive and demonstrates the degree to which available historical data can be used to celebrate or mitigate the significance of civilizations. Brugmansâs position is in this respect very interesting, as he was, at the same time, a respected scholar and a political activist within the âEuropean Movement,â a lobbying association created after the Second World War to promote European integration.
The year in which Mudimbeâs article was published (1968) coincides with a time of high convergence between French intellectual lifeâfrom the human sciences to philosophyâand Marxism. Mudimbeâs account is saturated with Marxist references. There is no doubt that he is here sympathetic to the new scientific rigor brought about by the reappraisal of Marx by thinkers such as Louis Althusser and that he welcomes the adoption of historical materialism by a new generation of historians of Africa.7 He is nonetheless also aware that the âeconomic interpretationâ informing Marxist analyses of class struggles and historical changes is not devoid of âideological opportunism.â Via the works of Endre SĂk and Jean-Jacques Goblot, Mudimbe nuances the contribution of Marxist thought to African history.
Endre SĂk (1891â1978), the Hungarian historian, was a pioneer of Marxist African studies, a domain that he attempted to systematize as early as the late 1920s when he was a political refugee in the USSR.8 Interestingly, his History of Black Africa (1966) was completed in Moscow in the late 1930s and early 1940s and not published until twenty years later, with no apparent revision.9 This delay may account for some of the naive and stereotypical views expressed by SĂk on precolonial Africa. âThe majority of African peoples,â he argues, lived a âbarbaric lifeâ and in âcomplete isolationâ from the rest of the world until their âencounter with Europeans.â The tone is also very dogmatic, and SĂk struggles to define imperialism, which he, after Lenin, lumps together a little too hastily with âworld capitalismâ to denounce âthe monstrous historic crimesâ committed by this system.10 It is not that he is wrong but, in the midst of the cold war and Soviet imperialist expansion in the Third World, one would have expected a greater degree of scientific scrutiny. Mudimbeâs own criticism of SĂkâs work focuses on the historianâs inability to read Africa in its own terms: SĂk submits Africa to thought procedures and relations predetermined by historical materialism. Ultimately, Mudimbe is of the view that SĂkâs scientific method marks the return of a new type of ethnocentrism or suprarationalism, since it âtransposes the universal to the particular, only to expel the particular from the universalâ (MR, 15).
Jean-Jacques Goblotâs analysis of the concept of civilization offers, according to Mudimbe, a more nuanced perspective on the encounters between Africa and the West. Mudimbe refers here to a series of articles published by Goblot in 1967 in the Marxist journal La PensĂ©e.11 Goblot (1931â2009) wishes to depart from the âtheoretical sclerosisâ that has âhindered the fecundity of historical materialism for too long.â (1967: 133:5; trans. eds.) He is cautiously critical of Stalinism and Stalinâs own schĂ©matisme and tendency (in Dialectical and Historical Materialism)12 to accord a universal value to a formulaic and âsuprahistoricalâ theory of historical development in which non-European modes of production are usually dismissed as aberrant (5â10). Mudimbe is eager to embrace this idea and endorse the points made by Goblot on the necessity of adopting a less tyrannical model so as to approach civilizations not as monoliths but âin terms of imprints or legacies.â This important focus enables Mudimbe to move away from a monopolistic conception of civilizations and to argue that sub-Saharan Africa, albeit on the receiving end of the âepistemologicalâ and âalphabeticâ revolutions mentioned here, should not be regarded as a historically passive entity. By way of Goblot, Mudimbe is arguing for the promotion of less partisan and chauvinistic practices on the part of historians. Civilizations are not set entities but result from complex exchanges and mutations in which cultural and technological monopolies become blurred when scrutinized more closely. The genesis of negritude, as mentioned earlier, reveals, beyond the expected Franco-African dialogues, that Francophone African intellectuals during the interwar period also experienced âthe German crisis of French thought.â
In his examination of the factors that facilitated the introduction of the European alphabet as a result of modern colonialism, Mudimbe is keen to dismiss the traditional opposition between preliterate and literate civilizations. Instead, he focuses on the longue durĂ©e and the fact that this alphabetical revolution, which started thousands of years ago in Europe, in Africa, and in Asia, constitutes in fact âa fortunate short-circuit of historyâ resulting from âtransfers, displacements, and rupturesâ in which the determining role of Europe, albeit crucial for contemporary Africa, needs to be somewhat relativized. Ultimately, Mudimbe attempts, like LĂ©vi-Strauss in Race and History,13 to attenuate the ethnic weight of human progress. In his conclusion, Mudimbe is eager to reiterate the significance of âWestern legaciesâ in the shaping of contemporary ânegro consciousness.â Indeed he is keen to explore the possible impact of Marxist thought on postindependence African politics. This conclusion is clearly aimed at new African leadersâMobutu, of course, but also FĂ©lix HouphouĂ«t-Boigny of Ivory Coast and Ahmed SĂ©kou TourĂ© of Guinea-Conakryâand their tendency to celebrate essential African communal values and favor âthe [African] legacy via sentimental choicesâ (MR, 23). Their dismissal of the individual at the expense of a timeless âalready whole beingâ is in his view very dangerous, as it contributes to the consolidation of autocratic rule and, even more crucially, restricts the possibility of African development in the foreseeable future. Just as Mudimbe expresses concern about the dogmatism of certain Marxist thinkers, so he quietly voices his worries about the rigidity of some of Africaâs new leaders.
âThe Rigors of Economicsâ is built upon analogous premises. This piece is the second part of a chapter published in Autour de âla Nationâ entitled âWestern Legacy and Negro Consciousness,â the first part being a verbatim reproduction of the original article that has just been discussed here. Although its focus is very different, this review of Jacques Austruyâs Le Scandale du dĂ©veloppement (1965) provides another reflection upon the power of Euro-American academic ethnocentrism and economistsâ âegocentric deformation.â Austruy (1930â2010) contends that scientific procedures are evoked to implement ideology-driven programs. The idea that development, as conceived in the West, may not be the most ârationalâ course of action was defended by Austruy throughout his career, not only in the academic journal Revue Tiers Monde but also in monographs such as LâIslam face au dĂ©veloppement Ă©conomique.14 As a politically committed intellectual, Mudimbe refutes the falsely universal arguments put forward by experts in econometrics and instead highlights the latterâs tendency to unleash epistemological violence.15
Austruyâs book is unusual in that it contains commentaries on Austruyâs own findings written by Ga...