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Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1994.
XVII, 234 pages
ISBN 0-253-33898-0
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Valentine Y. Mudimbe's greatest strength, his ability to tell stories, is particularly evident in The Idea of Africa. Rather than one overarching narrative of an "African" continent composed of many civilizations, he tells five stories for his children growing up in the United States. Thus, he attempts to impart to both them and his readers an understanding of Africa's genesis. He argues that weighty European scholarship has prevented an awareness of the complex and ancient cultural milieu we refer to by the term "Africa". This thesis is enhanced by the suprising angles he takes in his excursions into the fields of history, geography and the tradition of literature and art.
In opposition to the Greco-Roman originated idea which prevails in many European views of Africa, that "the other" is "barbaric" and "wild". Mudimbe tells the stories of the periphery, thereby carefully charting a course to a new anthropology, one that addresses Heidegger's challenge. This is so because the construction of the human as an idea is not required, neither does the essence of being need to be explained. Instead, this new anthropology tries to admit the vagueness which surrounds the fragmentary and subjective character of our attempts at self-knowledge.
Mudimbe's approach is commendable, though perhaps too personal to be followed exactly by anyone else. The sacrifice of a single, self-contained philosophical plan, the open attitude that admits not to have answered all questions yet and the detailed description and analysis of "Africanism" are all aspects which make the book well worth reading. It offers the novice an overview of past as well as present thinking about Africa and is extremely fertile for the examination of cultural systems. In criticism, it can be pointed out that Mudimbe does not clearly integrate his own position in the field of current African philosophy and thus remains on the outside.
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