Variations on the Beautiful in the Congolese World of Sounds
By Achille Mbembe Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, Congolese rumba and its offshoots exercised an intimate power over the African imaginary. The sounds, rhythms and ethnic dances of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo-Brazzaville and a large area of Angola birthed the music of which we speak. Mixtures and borrowings from […]
The Internet is Afropolitan
Achille Mbembe discusses the history and horizon of digital communication and identity in the African continent with Bregtje van der Haak. Mbembe suggests that what some regard as the explosion of the Internet is really just the continuation of the age old cultures in the new age of the Afropolitan. Bregtje van der Haak: The […]
Fifty Years Of African Decolonisation
by Achille Mbembe (translated by Karen Press) Here we are in 2010, fifty years after decolonisation. Is there anything at all to commemorate, or should one on the contrary start all over again? Here restoration of authoritarian rule, there administrative multi-partyism, elsewhere minimal, easily reversible advances, and just about everywhere, extremely elevated levels of social violence […]
Name Death & Text
Achille Mbembe unpicks the assassination, disfigurement, and attempted degrading of Ruben Um Nyobè. Ruben Um Nyobè, Secretary General of the CPU (Cameroonian Peoples Union), was shot dead on September 13, 1958, in the early afternoon, by French troops dispatched to put an end to a rebellion sweeping the Sanaga-Maritime region since 1955 – a rebellion fomented by the CPU. His death came seconds only […]
Sortir de la grande nuit. Essai sur l’Afrique décolonisée
Norbert N. Ouendji interviews Achille Mbembe before Afropolitanism (circa 2010) « Sortir de la grande nuit. Essai sur l’Afrique décolonisée ». Tel est le titre du dernier livre d’Achille Mbembe qui paraît aux Éditions La Découverte à Paris le 14 octobre. J’ai eu le privilège de lire de manière attentive cet ouvrage riche et très documenté écrit en […]