Reviews ofOn the Postcolony

Book review: Dreaming the Post-Colony: Achille Mbembe’s On the Postcolony

“…Mbembe works in the imagery of sleeping and dreaming, of the imaginary, of the hallucinatory, of the surreal, and of the grotesque; of religion, of magic, and of myth (2002, 2015). Reviewers allude to this attention to the imaginary (Pouchedepass, 2006; Quayson, 2001), but do not fully engage with it. Mbembe depicts an essentialized, brutal vision of Africa that we see much more clearly in his acquiescing, momentarily, to its vocabulary than if Mbembe were to dismiss it with curt disdain.…”

“…Mbembe depicts an essentialized, brutal vision of Africa that we see much more clearly in his acquiescing, momentarily, to its vocabulary than if Mbembe were to dismiss it with curt disdain. The critique leveled at Mbembe that he fails to ‘escape the influence of the very same body of works [of Western essentializations of Africa]’ that he denounces (Obarrio, in Pouchepadass, 2006: 199) is unfounded in such a reading. It is necessary, if we are to fruitfully engage with myth, to enter into its ontology.…”

“…Significantly, he tells us that ‘nothing in On the Postcolony … could resemble a linear history’ (Mbembe, 2015: xiv). The book’s rhythmic physicality, and its engagement with ‘the dramaturgy of the political domination of Africa’ (Ferme, in Pouchepadass, 2006: 193), suggest the idea of ‘performance’. Employing this method, the often disjointed chapters—an ‘itinerary of discursive forms’ to use Quayson’s phrase (2001: 152); or a ‘set of exercises in existence’ for Janz (2002: 2)—and extended metaphors of On the Postcolony should not be read literally, but with attention to different themes and allegorical extrapolations in interaction with each other and around Mbembe’s argument.…”