Achille Mbembe and the Postcolony: Going beyond the Text

In recent years, across a range of theoretical disciplines, from philosophy to cultural studies, from film theory to postcolonial studies, the idea that the object of study is a "text" has gained increasing prominence. Indeed, so widespread is this discourse of the text that the assumptions woven into the use of the word are most often passed over in silence. I find this silence regarding the use of the notion of text problematic. Text in our times (that of theorizing within a poststructuralist horizon) has become the fundamental element. It is now an elementary assumption that any phenomenon—metaphysical, physical, cultural, conceptual, and so on—appears and must appear in the form of text, to be "read" and interpreted. Beyond the world of the book, it is now common to talk of "reading" films, plays, buildings, and works of art. But why should this be so? Why is it that treating any form of reference as a textual reference is unquestionably repeated and reproduced in critical discourse? What are the assumptions that underlie the notion of textuality? What is the history of this movement towards the text, and what signs are there of how this historical movement is developing? Furthermore, if we have cause to become suspicious of or even reject textuality (for whatever reason), what might take its place?

My aim here is not to attempt to respond directly to all these questions. My focus is rather to examine an emerging voice within postcolonial theory, as a more channeled pathway into the critique of inscriptivism and an initial exploration of what lies beyond it. The Cameroonian theorist Achille Mbembe has gathered critical attention in recent years, in part from his contributions to the journal Public Culture, and also because of his recent book, On the Postcolony. What is significant about Mbembe's project, in terms of a critique of the textual paradigm, is that he occupies an interstitial space somewhere between poststructuralism and existential phenomenology. I will claim that Mbembe fails in his stated intentions of thinking through postcolonial Africa, and that his project is theoretically confused and devoid of productive substantial argument. Furthermore, I will argue that the ultimate failure of his book is not to recognize all the important work that has already been written on Africa that avoids the criticisms he claims to apply to all existing African theory. Nonetheless, in spite of these irresolvable blind spots, I will also argue that, because of his theoretical location, his proposed project of opening up "another form of writing" for African discourse reveals an ambivalence towards the poststructuralist discourse of the sign, and therefore points the way forward for further research beyond the textual paradigm.

In the recently published collection of essays entitled On the Postcolony, Achille Mbembe's aim is to think African lived experience and forms of power beyond Western imposed reductivism. Focusing on detailed historical and cultural analyses of West Africa, and Cameroon in particular, Mbembe tries to show how new concepts and forms of writing are necessary in order to capture adequately the complexities of African life. To begin to see how Mbembe's work challenges textualism, we need to first of all situate his thinking, both from the point of view of tradition and in terms of method. The introduction, "Time on the Move," is in part an attempt to frame his project theoretically, and at the same time clear away the enduring perceptions of Africa, African lived experience, and the discourses that circumscribe both as overwhelmingly malignant. Mbembe contests, in emphatic terms, the ugly sisters of traditionalism or nativism, on the one hand, and the patronizing neoliberal discourse of "good governance," on the other. He argues convincingly that European thinking on Africa continues to assume it is the final repository for the inaccessible, the "strange," and the incessant work of the negative. For example, he refers to political science discourse in terms of its "extraordinary poverty," and denounces...