The Subject in Africa: In Foucault's Footsteps

How can the world be an object of knowledge and at the same time a testing place for the subject?

Michel Foucault, L'herméneutique du sujet

Following the path traced by Michel Foucault, Achille Mbembe (in "African Modes of Self-Writing," Public Culture 14 [winter 2002]: 239-73) takes us into a properly iconoclastic reflection on practices of the self in relation to Africa. It is on purpose that I write "in relation to Africa": Mbembe refuses to deal with the subject whose particular quality is that of being "African." That is a quality imposed upon the subject—sometimes self-imposed—either by virtue of his or her continent of "origin" ¹ or by virtue of invention by the Other, who vis-à-vis the subject is then affirmed as anything but African. An image taken from the Austrian writer Robert Musil can underscore the fundamental characteristic of this position: Mbembe deals with a subject without (particular) qualities—at the risk of being accused of false consciousness by all who identify him according to the color of his skin.

Assuming a Promethean challenge, Mbembe begins with an assertion of Cartesian derivation: All people are by nature in a position to enunciate their own identity. They are not bound to submit beforehand to any transformation, or conversion, or to follow any master. Identity being a political formulation of the self's relation to the Other, it is correct to follow Descartes in the assertion that every human being is capable of attaining the truth as well as his or her identity, as long as he or she applies the right method.

But herein lies a serious pitfall. Who formulates the right method, and on what bases? The title of Mbembe's article suggests that within the problematic of identity formation, narrative can take the place of the Cartesian method as applied to the search for truth. Mbembe seems to believe that self-writing is not possible without the mastery of time; his epigraph cites Gilles Deleuze, who emphasizes time as a condition of subjectivity. Yet having taken this other path, we find ourselves back exactly where we started. For narrative here refers to the religion of the Book (it makes little difference whether by this is meant the Book of Christianity, Judaism, or Islam) as a condition for acceding to the mastery of time. And precisely in being recognized by the Other, subjectivity is placed at risk of being wrested from the subject.

Shouldn't the question be framed in other terms? This relation to the Other that constitutes identity could be formulated in terms of co-presence rather than in terms of succession. Identity would then be organized according to the category of space rather than that of time. Could not identity be conceived as performative—transactional, as Foucault (2001) says—rather than normative?

I must proceed schematically in order to point out what I consider to be the most important features of Mbembe's approach. First, to place his reflections in philosophical context, the question should be raised of the path and the master. Beginning with the title, then, it is clear that marking out the route and accompanying Mbembe is the Foucault of the 1980s—"Writing the Self" was published in 1983—Foucault, that is, as the historian of the subject rather than the historian of power. The point of departure from which Mbembe conceives of the subject and of the enunciation of identity becomes clear in the context of Foucault's earlier publications.

In Africa, the subject's own place—his or her lieu propre, to use Michel de Certeau's term—is indiscipline. With regard to memory, it is this identity as his or her own place that locates the subject's relation to the past. One way of making the past present is to follow Plato, as in Paul Ricoeur (2000): guided by a master, the subject remembers...