Crossref Citations
This article has been cited by the following publications. This list is generated based on data provided by Crossref.
Adebanwi, Wale
2022.
The carnality of power.
Africa,
Vol. 92,
Issue. 1,
p.
112.
Article contents
‘Provisional notes on the postcolony’ in Congo studies: an overview of themes and debates
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 January 2022
Abstract
This article considers the uptake of Achille Mbembe’s article ‘Provisional notes on the postcolony’ (1992), the book De la Postcolonie: essai sur l’imagination politique dans l’Afrique contemporain (2000) and its translated version, On the Postcolony (2001), in Congo studies. ‘Congo’ here is a shorthand for the current Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly known as Zaire. The article is concerned with the ways in which these two English-language texts (and their original French versions) figure in the social sciences and the humanities, specifically in the field of study relating to Zairian/Congolese society and culture. It becomes clear that the theme of mutual entanglements of commandement (power) and citizens not only influences political studies but also structures Congo scholarship on economy and governance, popular culture and erotics. The article ends with some reflections on academic writing about Congo, the limited uptake of ‘Provisional notes’ and On the Postcolony in religious studies, questions about ethics and scientific writing about political postcolonial cultures, and especially the necessity to historicize the postcolony.
Résumé
Cet article s’intéresse à l’utilisation faite de l’article d’Achille Mbembe « Notes provisoires sur la postcolonie » (1992), de son ouvrage De la postcolonie. Essai sur l’imagination politique dans l’Afrique contemporaine (2000) et de sa version traduite, On the Postcolony (2001), dans les études sur le Congo. Le terme Congo est ici l’abréviation de l’actuelle république démocratique du Congo, ex-Zaïre. Cet article traite de la manière dont les deux textes de langue anglaise (et leurs versions françaises d’origine) figurent en sciences sociales et en lettres et sciences humaines, en particulier dans le domaine d’étude concernant la société et la culture zaïroises/congolaises. Il apparait clairement que le thème des intrications mutuelles du commandement (pouvoir) et des citoyens non seulement influence les études politiques, mais aussi structure la recherche sur l’économie et la gouvernance, la culture populaire et l’érotique au Congo. L’article conclut par des réflexions sur les travaux universitaires sur le Congo, l’utilisation limitée des « Notes provisoires » et de l’ouvrage On the Postcolony dans les études religieuses, des questions sur l’éthique et les travaux scientifiques concernant les cultures postcoloniales politiques, et en particulier la nécessité d’historiser la postcolonie.
- Type
- Rethinking Achille Mbembe’s ‘Provisional notes on the postcolony’
- Information
- Copyright
- © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press
References
Arens, S. (2018) ‘Narrating the (post)nation? Aspects of the local and the global in francophone Congolese writing’, Research in African Literatures 48(1): 22–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biaya, T. K. (2000) ‘Jeunes et culture de la rue en Afrique urbaine (Addis-Abeba, Dakar et Kinshasa)’, Politique Africaine 80: 12–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Büscher, K. (2012) ‘Urban governance beyond the state: practices of informal urban regulation in the city of Goma, eastern DR Congo’, Urban Forum 23: 483–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Büscher, K. and Mathys, G. (2013) ‘Navigating the urban “in-between space”: local livelihood and identity strategies in exploiting the Goma/Gisenyi border’ in Korf, B. and Raeymaekers, T. (eds), Violence on the Margins: states, conflict, and borderlands. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Covington-Ward, Y. (2015) Gesture and Power: religion, nationalism, and everyday performance in Congo. Durham NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crawford Young, M. (2004) ‘The end of the post-colonial state in Africa? Reflections on changing African political dynamics’, African Affairs 103(410): 23–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Boeck, F. (1996) ‘Postcolonialism, power and identity: local and global perspectives from Zaïre’ in Werbner, R. and Ranger, T. (eds), Postcolonial Identities in Africa. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
De Boeck, F. (2000) ‘Borderland breccia: the mutant hero and the historical imagination of a Central-African diamond frontier’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History [e-journal], 1(2) <https://muse.jhu.edu/article/7350>.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Boeck, F. (2005) ‘The apocalyptic interlude: revealing death in Kinshasa’, African Studies Review 48(2): 11–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Boeck, F. and Plissart, M.-F. (2005) Kinshasa: tales of the invisible city. Ghent: Ludion.Google Scholar
Devisch, R (1996) ‘“Pillaging Jesus”: healing churches and the villagisation of Kinshasa’, Africa 66(4): 555–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Devlieger, C. (2018) ‘
Rome and the Romains: laughter on the border between Kinshasa and Brazzaville’, Africa 88(1): 160–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Douma, N. and Hilhorst, D. (2012) Fonds de Commerce? Assistance aux victimes de violences sexuelles en République Démocratique du Congo. Occasional paper 2. Wageningen: Wageningen University.Google Scholar
Eriksson-Baaz, M. (2019) ‘Who’s at risk? Reflections on in/security when working with/through military brokers in conflict settings’, Civil Wars 21(2): 286–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eriksson-Baaz, M. and Stern, M. (2013) Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War?: Perceptions, prescriptions, problems in the Congo and beyond. London and New York NY: Zed Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fabian, J. (2000) Out of Our Minds: reason and madness in the exploration of Central Africa. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gondola, D. (1999) ‘Dream and drama: the search for elegance among Congolese youth’, African Studies Review 42(1): 23–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hendriks, T. (2015) ‘Ethnographic notes on “camp”: centrifugality and liminality on the rainforest frontier’ in Amilhat Szary, A.-L. and Giraut, F. (eds), Borderities and the Politics of Contemporary Mobile Borders. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Hendriks, T. (2022) Rainforest Capitalism: ecstasis and extraction in a Congolese timber concession. Durham NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hibou, B. (1998) ‘Retrait ou redéploiement de l’État?’, Critique Internationale 1: 151–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hibou, B. (1999) ‘La “décharge”: nouvel interventionnisme’, Politique Africaine 1(73): 6–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hönke, J. (2010) ‘New political topographies: mining companies and indirect discharge in Southern Katanga (DRC)’, Politique Africaine 4(120): 105–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, N. R. (2002) ‘Tintin and the interruptions of Congolese comics’ in Landau, P. and Griffin, S. (eds), Images and Empires: visuality in colonial and postcolonial Africa. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hunt, N. R. (2008) ‘An acoustic register, tenacious images, and Congolese scenes of rape and repetition’, Cultural Anthropology 23(2): 220–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, N. R. (2016) A Nervous State: violence, remedies, and reverie in colonial Congo. Durham NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingold, T. (2017) ‘On human correspondence’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 23(1): 9–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iniguez de Heredia, M. (2012) ‘Escaping statebuilding: resistance and civil society in the Democratic Republic of Congo’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 6(1): 75–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jewsiewicki, B. (1993) ‘Chéri Samba and the postcolonial reinvention of modernity’, Callaloo 16(4): 772–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kabamba, P. (2012) In and Out of the State: working the boundaries of power in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Working papers 15. Open Anthropology Cooperative Press.Google Scholar
Kahola, O. T. and Rubbers, B. (2008) ‘Entre collaboration et confrontation: l’ambivalence des rapports entre pouvoirs publics et enfants de la rue à Lubumbashi (RDC)’, Autrepart 47: 25–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Makori, T. (2017) ‘Mobilizing the past: creuseurs, precarity and the colonizing structure in the Congo Copperbelt’, Africa 87(4): 780–805.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mbembe, A. (2000) De la Postcolonie: essai sur l’imagination politique dans l’Afrique contemporaine. Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Mbembe, A. (2005) ‘Variations on the beautiful in the Congolese world of sounds’, Politique Africaine 4(100): 69–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mbembe, A. (2006) ‘
On the Postcolony: a brief response to critics’, African Identities 4(2): 143–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mbembe, A. and Roitman, J. (1995) ‘Figures of the subject in times of crisis’, Public Culture 7(2): 323–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mertens, C. (2018) ‘Undoing research on sexual violence in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’, ACME: International Journal for Critical Geographies [online].Google Scholar
Mertens, C. and Pardy, M. (2017) ‘“Sexurity” and its effects in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’, Third World Quarterly 38(4): 956–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petit, P. and Mulambwa Mutambwa, G. (2005) ‘“La crise”: lexicon and ethos of the second economy in Lubumbashi’, Africa 75(4): 467–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pype, K. (2007) ‘Fighting boys, strong men and gorillas: notes on the imagination of masculinities in Kinshasa’, Africa 77(2): 250–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pype, K. (2011) ‘Visual media and political communication: reporting about suffering in Kinshasa’, Journal of Modern African Studies 49(4): 625–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pype, K. (2016) ‘(Not) talking like a Motorola: politics of masking and unmasking in Kinshasa’s mobile phone culture’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 22(3): 633–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pype, K. (2017) ‘Branhamist kindoki: ethnographic notes on connectivity, technology and urban witchcraft in contemporary Kinshasa’ in Rio, K., MacCarthy, M. and Blanes, R. (eds), Pentecostalism and Witchcraft: spiritual warfare in Africa and Melanesia. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Reyntjens, F. (2009) The Great African War: Congo and regional geopolitics, 1996–2006. New York NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schatzberg, M. G. (2001) Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa: father, family, food. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, A. O. (2010) ‘Performing acupuncture on a necropolitical body: choreographer Faustin Linyekula’s Studios Kabako in Kisangani, Democratic Republic of Congo’, Dance Research Journal 42(2): 13–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, J. H. and Mantz, J. W. (2006) ‘Do cellular phones dream of civil war?: The mystification of production and the consequences of technology fetishism in the Eastern Congo’ in Kirsch, M. (ed.), Inclusion and Exclusion in the Global Arena. New York NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Thomas, D. (2003) ‘Fashion matters: La Sape and vestimentary codes in transnational contexts and urban diasporas’, Modern Language Notes 118(4): 947–73.Google Scholar
Titeca, K. and De Herdt, T. (2011) ‘Real governance beyond the “failed state”: negotiating education in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’, African Affairs 110(439): 213–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trapido, J. (2016) Breaking Rocks: music, ideology and economic collapse, from Paris to Kinshasa. Oxford: Berghahn Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verweijen, J. and Eriksson-Baaz, M. (2018) ‘Confronting the colonial: the (re)production of “African” exceptionalism in critical security’, Security Dialogue 49(1–2): 57–69.Google Scholar
Vlassenroot, K. (2008) Armed Groups and Militias in Eastern Congo. Lecture Series on African Security 5. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet.Google Scholar
Vogel, C. and Stearns, J. K. (2018) ‘Briefing: Kivu’s intractable security conundrum, revisited’, African Affairs 117(469): 695–707.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, B. W. (2008) Rumba Rules: the politics of dance music in Mobutu’s Zaire. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
- 1
- Cited by