On the Postcolony
Achille Mbembe
Power in the postcolony rules through spectacle, excess and grotesque intimacy.
Mbembe examines how power is exercised and experienced in the postcolony, arguing that authority sustains itself through spectacle, excess and a grotesque intimacy binding rulers and ruled. Drawing on Cameroon and beyond, he rejects both celebratory nationalism and simple narratives of victimhood, depicting a form of command that endures through everyday complicity. The book brought continental philosophy and postcolonial theory to bear on African politics, and it became one of the most cited and debated works on the nature of power on the continent.
Its legacy. It reshaped theoretical writing about power on the continent.
- Author
- Achille Mbembe
- First published
- 2001
- Genre
- Political theory
- Theme
- The Postcolonial State and Its Discontents
Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism
Next →The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly
More from The Postcolonial State and Its Discontents
- Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism — Mahmood Mamdani
Colonialism split Africans into citizens and subjects, and independence kept the divide.
- The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly — Jean-Francois Bayart
Politics as appetite: power pursued through patronage and the belly.
- The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence — Martin Meredith
Fifty years of independence, from the hopes of 1960 to their unraveling.
- It's Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower — Michela Wrong
An anti-corruption czar blows the whistle on his own government.