Abstract
This chapter interrogates V.Y. Mudimbe’s archaeological reading of the representation and inscription of Africa’s difference in cultural history, in The Invention of Africa (1988). It sees Mudimbe’s archaeological approach to Africa’s difference in cultural history as moving beyond Eurocentrism and Afrocentrism, yet as uncritically taking for granted Foucault’s archaeology of the Same and the Other. The concerns of this chapter are twofold. On the one hand, it brings to view the major blind spots of Foucault’s archaeology of the Other in The Order of Things (1966, 1970). On the other hand, it sees Mudimbe’s archaeological approach to Africa’s difference in cultural history as constrained by the limitations of Foucault’s archaeology of the Other. My analyses of Mudimbe’s project critically engage with the anthropological, philosophical, and historical issues raised by his archaeological reading of Africa’s identity and difference in cultural history.
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Agzenay, A. (2020). V.Y. Mudimbe’s Archaeological Reading of Africa’s Difference in Cultural History. In: Imafidon, E. (eds) Handbook of African Philosophy of Difference. Handbooks in Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14835-5_7
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