V. Y. Mudimbe

Elucidates the complex work of one of the most significant contemporary African thinkers, V. Y. Mudimbe A cutting edge, interdisciplinary book combining philosophy, postcolonial studies and African studies Mudimbe, currently Newman Ivey White Professor of Literature at Duke University, remains an influential critic

A monograph that is dedicated to the work of Valentin Yves Mudimbe. It charts the history of the seminal Congolese philosopher, epistemologist, and philologist from the late 1960s to the present day, exploring his major essays and novels. It highlights Mudimbe's trajectory through major debates on African nationalism, and Panafricanism.VY Mudimbe: Undisciplined Africanism is the first English-language monograph dedicated to the work of Valentin Yves Mudimbe. This book charts the intellectual history of the seminal Congolese philosopher, epistemologist, and philologist from the late 1960s to the present day, exploring his major essays and novels. Pierre-Philippe Fraiture highlights Mudimbe’s trajectory through major debates on African nationalism, Panafricanism, neo-colonialism, negritude, pedagogy, Christianisation, decolonisation, anthropology, postcolonial representations, and a variety of other subjects, using these as contexts for close readings of many of Mudimbe’s texts, both influential and lesser-known. The book demonstrates that Mudimbe’s intellectual career has been informed by a series of decisive dialogues with some of the key exponents of Africanism (Herodotus, EW Blyden, Placide Tempels), continental and postcolonial thought (Jean-Paul Sartre, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, and Claude Lévi-Strauss), and African thought and philosophy from Africa and the diaspora (L.S. Senghor, Patrice Nganang, and Achille Mbembe).