On the postcolony / Achille Mbembe.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mbembe, Achille, 1957-

Series:

Studies on the history of society and culture ; 41.

Studies on the history of society and culture ; 41

Standardized Title:

Notes provisoires sur la postcolonie. English

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Power (Social sciences)--Africa.

Power (Social sciences).

Postcolonialism--Africa.

Postcolonialism.

Subjectivity.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (284 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, c2001.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

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

Notes:

Original title: Notes provisoires sur la postcolonie.

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

ISBN:

9786613520234

9780520917538

0520917537

9781597347839

1597347833

9781280080180

1280080183

OCLC:

475931242