To Write the Africa World - edited by Achille Mbembe and Felwine Sarr
Translated by Drew Burk
English edition published in 2023 by Polity Press, Cambridge, UK and Hoboken, NJ
Originally published in 2017 in French as Écrire l’Afrique-Monde by Editions Jimsaan, Dakar, Sénégal
318 pages
ISBN: 978-1-5095-5107-1 (paperback)
As Europe finds itself increasingly decentered in the stage of global affairs, the Global South has become a pivotal scene for the future of humanity. In particular, the continent of Africa has been the central wellspring of resources that served to fuel the wealth of the Western world through the extraction of its resources and the colonization of its land and peoples. In late October 2016, thirty academics, philosophers, and artists from Africa and its diaspora met together at the Ateliers de la pensée (Workshops of Thought) in Dakar and Saint-Louis-du-Senegal as they discussed the role of Africa in a dynamically changing global landscape. As a result of this conference, Achille Mbembe and Felwine Sarr’s To Write The Africa World provides an English translation of these essays as their authors contemplate the role of Africa in a globalized society and its various potentials to serve as viable political and social models for the future.
Overview:
Composed of twenty essays from African philosophers, poets, novelists, sociologists, and anthropologists, To Write the Africa World seeks to further disrupt the hegemonic grip that the Western world holds on the discourses of philosophy, politics, art, and literature. As Nadia Yala Kisukidi writes, “The body of philosophy—however spiritualized it might be—is not an indifferent body. To get straight to the point: it is white, masculine, bourgeois, European, and inhabits the center ground. It’s the dominating body” (32). By decentralizing the West and placing African and diasporic thought at the center of our considerations, the authors hope to inspire innovative and creative ways to analyze our present moment and address the crises that global humanity will face in the future.
As such, one of the primary concerns of the book is the role of the universal in philosophical discourse, as the authors consider how decentralizing old narratives creates a space for a new universal around which to organize. Decolonization opens up the possibilities for a future of multiplicity and pluralism that shakes off the Eurocentric, colonialist foundation in favor of a novel, and possibly utopian, future. These essays seek to not only give a current viewpoint of the world from the Francophone Afro-diasporic perspective but to also offer Africa as an ontologically and epistemologically rich standpoint from which we can imagine and articulate new ways of thinking. As Mbembe writes in the Introduction, “Africa’s time is inseparable from the time of the world, and the creative task that confronts us is seeking to enable Africa’s future to come into being” (2).
Another key theme concerns the construction of the object and signifier of Africa, both in its current form and the potentiality it holds for future projects. The authors challenge us to reconsider Africa not as a mere name for a place, but rather as a history and an ongoing narrative (70). They also invite us to unlearn the traditional narratives placed on the continent, as Maurice Soudieck Dione writes,
In order to overcome this dead end, what is required is an African thought - not an African way of thinking. If that were the case, we would simply find ourselves succumbing to the same old traps and clichés. Rather, what is required is a thought formed by Africans concerned with Africa, emancipated from ideological postures, illuminating as much as programmatic and pragmatic, taking as its point of departure a lucid and realist analysis regarding all the problems on the continent, and, in order to resolve the impasses, they must elaborate strategies of the infusion and distribution of this thought at both the more elite levels and the popular levels, so as to mobilize the diverse political, social, cultural, and intellectual actors concerned, regarding its effectuation. (91)
Throughout these essays, the authors also engage with a variety of philosophers and political theorists such as Senghor, Nkrumah, Towa, Sartre, Fanon, Cabral, W.E.B. Du Bois, Biko, Lourde, and Malcolm X as they interrogate the old frameworks that have defined Africa in the popular imagination and reconstitute a renewed vision for Africa’s role on the global stage into the future, challenging us to remain open to new possibilities.
Commendations:
Several aspects of this volume are well worth commending. First of all, the central thesis of this volume is sorely under-examined and imminently necessary to interrogate. African philosophy and theory have been vastly underread and neglected in much of contemporary Western scholarship, yet it holds many valuable and necessary insights to address the globalized problems that we currently face. The authors are astute in their analysis of contemporary post-colonial discourses and the necessity for new paradigms of thought. Some of the essays are more philosophically centered and dense, while others are much more focused on political theory and economics. As such, scholars from a wide array of disciplines will gain much from the insights of this volume.
Mbembe’s essays are particularly illuminating, as he provides the sinew that connects and binds these essays in a coherent framework. Many of the perspectives within this volume overlap with Mbembe’s On the Postcolony (2001) and Out of the Dark Night: Essays on Decolonization (2021), where he interrogates the concepts of temporality, spatiality, subjectivity, and power in shaping the African continent and its inhabitants. While the essays within this densely packed volume cover a wide range of topics and feature scholars from far-reaching disciplines, they all center around the present state and future of Africa. This thematic consistency, along with a consistent sense of urgency, makes for a necessary and dynamic read.
Many of the essays offer deep insight and are relatively accessible. For example, Ndongo Samba Sylla’s essay “Demographic Challenges and Technological Mutations: Does a Good-Paying Job Have a Future in Africa'' takes a sober and illuminating look at the economic future of Africa and the role that technology will play in employment opportunities. Taking stock of the rise of China and India as economic powerhouses in the first decades of the twenty-first century, Sylla argues that informal employment and economic precarity have defined the life of the vast majority of workers and that reliable full-time employment for all people is an illusion (213). To overcome this deadlock, Sylla argues that Africa must shed the Western-driven neoliberal model and dependency on the US dollar and the CFA in favor of radically new ways of organizing the economy. Overall, while also agreeing with his analysis and prescription, it was refreshing to see a grounded, materialist economic analysis among the rest of the essays that are much more philosophical and abstract in their content.
Critique:
On the other hand, I do have a few small critiques of this volume. First of all, as with any collection of essays, To Write the Africa World can be uneven in places. While some essays are deeply profound and imminently applicable, others seem to meander and lose themselves in overly academic prose. For example, Parfait D. Akana’s essay “Martiality and Death in Sexual Relations in Cameroon: Sociology for a Lexicon of Copulation'' examines the construction of highly gendered, dehumanizing language toward women and the imagery of violence, hunting, and conquest within descriptions of sexual encounters and marriage within Cameroon. While his thesis is sound and necessary to consider, it is buried in overly obtuse academic language, which more often than not obscures his argument, rather than illuminating it.
This overly academic language pervades many of these essays, which can often be frustrating since the core of their ideas are worth reading and considering. It is difficult to tell whether this is due to the content of the essays or if it is an issue of translation, but many sentences are overly convoluted and difficult to grasp, even for the advanced reader. As such, several of the essays are not readily accessible to a wide audience, which unfortunately limits their reach and impact. While most essays are roughly related to the condition of post-colonial discourse on the African continent, some of them offer merely tangential relationships to the rest of the volume, which can occasionally lead to a fragmented reading experience.
Conclusion:
Overall, To Write the Africa World is a compelling and urgently necessary collection of essays centered around the present and future role of Africa in the global sphere. While it would serve the reader well to at least have some background in the discourses around Afro-diasporic philosophy, politics, and literature during the past century, these essays serve as vital interventions into the current debates regarding the significant role that Africa will play in the decades to come. The problems that Africa faces are not confined to the continent alone. Rather, they are global issues that we all must address if we hope to have a livable future for humanity. For scholars and writers who are interested in the future of Africa and new forms of critical inquiry and thought emerging from the continent, this volume will be essential reading.
Thank you to Polity for sending a free copy for me to read and review.