On the Postcolony 9780520917538

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On the Postcolony

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HH

Achille Mbembe

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley • Los Angeles • London

STUDIES ON THE HISTORY OF SOCIETY AND C U L T U R E Victoria E. Bonnell and Lynn Hunt, Editors 1. Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution, by Lynn Hunt 2. The People of Paris: An Essay in Popular Culture in the Eighteenth Century, by Daniel Roche 3. Pont-St-Pierre, 1398-1789: Lordship, Community, and Capitalism in Early Modern France, by Jonathan Dewald 4. The Wedding of the Dead: Ritual, Poetics, and Popular Culture in Transylvania, by Gail Kligman 5. Students, Professors, and the State in Tsarist Russia, by Samuel D. Kassow 6. The New Cultural History, edited by Lynn Hunt 7. Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Siecle France: Politics, Psychology, and Style, by Debora L. Silverman 8. Histories of a Plague Year: The Social and the Imaginary in Baroque Florence, by Giulia Calvi 9. Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia, by Lynn Mally 10. Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914-1921, by Lars T. Lih 11. Territories of Grace: Cultural Change in the Seventeenth-Century Diocese of Grenoble, by Keith P. Luria 12. Publishing and Cultural Politics in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1810, by Carla Hesse 13. Limited Livelihoods: Gender and Class in Nineteenth-Century England, by Sony a O. Rose 14. Moral Communities: The Culture of Class Relations in the Russian Printing Industry, 1867-1907, by Mark Steinberg 15. Bolshevik Festivals, 1917-1920,, by James von Geldern 16. Venice's Hidden Enemies: Italian Heretics in a Renaissance City, by John Martin 17. Wondrous in His Saints-: Counter-Reformation Propaganda in Bavaria, by Philip M. Soergel 18. Private Lives and Public Affairs: The Causes Celebres of Prerevolutionary France, by Sarah Maza 19. Hooliganism: Crime, Culture, and Power in St. Petersburg, 1900-1914, by Joan Neuberger 20. Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy, by Paula Findlen 21. Listening in Paris: A Cultural History, by James H. Johnson 22. The Fabrication of Labor: Germany and Britain, 1640-1914, by Richard Biernacki 23. The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class, by Anna Clark 24. Taste and Power: Furnishing Modern France, by Leora Auslander

2.5- Cholera in Post-Revolutionary Paris: A Cultural History, by Catherine J. Kudlick 26. The Women of Paris and Their French Revolution, by Dominique Godineau 27. Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters under Lenin and Stalin, by Victoria E. Bonnell 2.8. Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini's Italy, by Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi 2.9. Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India, 1891-1970, by Sumathi Ramaswamy 30. Crescendo of the Virtuoso: Spectacle, Skill, and Self-Promotion in Paris during the Age of Revolution, by Paul Metzner 31. Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 1856-1914, by Stephen P. Frank 32. The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study in Practices, by Oleg Kharkhordin 3 3. What Difference Does a Husband Make? Women and Marital Status in Germany, by Elizabeth Heineman 34. Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture, edited by Victoria E. Bonnell and Lynn Hunt 35. Cultural Divides: Domesticating America in Cold War Germany, by Uta G. Poiger 36. The Frail Social Body and Other Fantasies in Interwar France, by Carolyn J. Dean 37. Blood and Fire: Rumor and History in East and Central Africa, by Luise White 38. The New Biography: Performing Femininity in Nineteenth-Century France, by Jo Burr Margadant 39. France and the Cult of the Sacred Heart: An Epic Tale for Modern Times, by Raymond Jonas 40. Politics and Theater: The Crisis of Legitimacy in Restoration France, 1815-1830, by Sheryl Kroen 41. On the Postcolony, by Achille Mbembe

The introduction and chapters 2, 4, and 5 were translated by A. M. Berrett. Chapter 3 was translated by Janet Roitman and Murray Last, with assistance from the author. Chapter 6 and the conclusion were translated by Steven Kendall. Chapter 3 was originally published as "Provisional Notes on the Postcolony," Africa 62, i (1992), 3-37. Chapter 4 was originally published as "La 'Chose' et ses doubles dans la caricature camerounaise," Cahier d3etudes africaines 36, 1-2 (1996), pp. 143-70. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © zoo i by the Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mbembe, J.-A., 1957[Notes provisoires sur la postcolonie. English] On the postcolony / Achille Mbembe. p . cm. — (Studies on the history of society and culture ; 41) Original title: Notes provisoires sur la postcolonie. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-520-20435-5 (pbk : alk. paper) i. Power (Social sciences)—Africa. 2. Postcolonialism—Africa. 3. Subjectivity. I. Title. II. Series. HN78o.Z9P664i3 302.3*096—dc2i

2001 00-062854

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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI / NISO Z390.481992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).®

Contents

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Introduction: Time on the Move

i

Of Commandement On Private Indirect Government The Aesthetics of Vulgarity The Thing and Its Doubles Out of the World God's Phallus

24 66 102 142, 173 212

Conclusion: The Final Manner

23 5

Bibliography Index

245 271

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INTRODUCTION

Time on the Move No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it—this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours—the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar.1

Speaking rationally about Africa is not something that has ever come naturally. Doing so, at this cusp between millenia, comes even less so.2 It is for all the world as if the most radical critique of the most obtuse and cynical prejudices about Africa were being made against the background of an impossibility, the impossibility of getting over and done "with something without running the risk of repeating it and perpetuating it under some other guise."3 What is going on? First, the African human experience constantly appears in the discourse of our times as an experience that can only be understood through a negative interpretation. Africa is never seen as possessing things and attributes properly part of "human nature." Or, when it is, its things and attributes are generally of lesser value, little importance, and poor quality. It is this elementariness and primitiveness that makes Africa the world par excellence of all that is incomplete, mutilated, and unfinished, its history reduced to a series of setbacks of nature in its quest for humankind. At another level, discourse on Africa is almost always deployed in the framework (or on the fringes) of a meta-text about the animal—to be exact, about the beast: its experience, its world, and its spectacle. In this meta-text, the life of Africans unfolds under two signs. First is the sign of the strange and the monstrous—of what, even as it opens an appealing depth before us, is constantly eluding and escaping us. Attempts are made to discover its status, and to do so the first requirement is, apparently, to abandon our world of meaning; is not Africa

2.

Time on the Move

to be understood for what it is, an entity with its peculiar feature that of shared roots with absolute brutality, sexual license, and death? The other sign, in the discourse of our times, under which African life is interpreted is that of intimacy. It is assumed that, although the African possesses a self-referring structure that makes him or her close to "being human," he or she belongs, up to a point, to a world we cannot penetrate. At bottom, he/she is familiar to us. We can give an account of him/ her in the same way we can understand the psychic life of the beast. We can even, through a process of domestication and training, bring the African to where he or she can enjoy a fully human life. In this perspective, Africa is essentially, for us, an object of experimentation. There is no single explanation for such a state of affairs. We should first remind ourselves that, as a general rule, the experience of the Other, or the problem of the 74> 76, 77> 84, 88, 90, 93, 136, 155 civility, 37, 38,72,74,93 coercion, 6, 31, 42, 43, 51, 52, 56, 62, 66, 75-80, 82-85, 88, 89, 92, 93, 98, 128, 215, 219 COitUS, 175, 220, 222

colonial, 28-32, 34, 35, 40, 42, 43, 57, 59, 69, 72, 86, 102, 122, 125, 126, 134, 135, 140, 174-76, 178-83, 187, 188, 190, 191, 208 colonialism, 13, 14, 19, 25-27, 86, 95, 96, 113, 140, 189, 236, 237 colonized, 6, 26, 27, 28, 31, 35, 59, 174, 175, 179-82, 184, 187, 189, 190, 193, 194, 196, 236, 237; image of, 26 colonizer, 29, 30, 40, 179-84, 186-88, 196, 236, 237 colony(ies), 27, 32, 35, 71, 92, 113, 175, 179, 182, 183-86, 189, 191, 192, 196, 197,238 commandement, 24-58, 84, 103-9, in, 114-15, 117-20, 122, 125-29, 188 contemporaneousness, 5, 17 contingent, 6, 8, 10, 13, 28, 79, 80, 174 conversion, 212, 226-31, 234

Index

272

conviviality, no, 128-29, 237, 240 copulation, 28, 108, 158, 178 corpse, 8, 27, 186, 201 corruption, 31, 68, 83-86, 89, 129, 186, 200, 236; and venality, 85 cross, 214, 220, 221, 223, 224, 234 crowds, in, 243 crucifixion, 174, 182, 220-22 cruelty, 137, 175, 181 custom/ary, 4, 10, 14, 25, 33, 37, 47, 71, 72, 91, 120, 127, 139, 193, 229 cycle, 4, 16, 119-20 dance, 114, 122-23, 128, 129-30, 139, 144, 167, 176, 182, 185 dancers, 114, 122-23, 129-30, 185 darkness, 3, 9, 19, 186, 207 death, 2, 8, n, 13-15, 18, 27, 47, 81, 82, 85, 107, 115-16, 120, 126, 127, 131, 132, 137, 145, 146, 160, 163, 165, 173, 174, 178, 182, 186, 189, 192, 193, i95-*°3» *°5> "2-, i 14, 220-25, 229, 231, 238; and the dead, 132-33, 166, 178, 179, 185, 204-6, 223 debt, 45, 47, 53, 67, 71, 73, 80, 131 defecation, 108, 112 deliverance, 225 derision, 51, 105, 107 desire, 15, 188, 189, 190, 199, 212, 219, 224, 232, 233, 235, 238 discharge, 80-82 displacement, 14, 15, 17 dissolution, 67, 72, 74, 95, 174, 199, 223,240 distance/s/ing, 109, 153, 197, 203 divine, 15, 212, 217, 220, 226-28, 231, 2-33 divinity, 213, 216, 220, 223 domestication, 2, 27, 109, 188, 236; encirclement/circle as result of, 27 double, 109, 142, 146, 160, 165, 237 dreams, 12, 145, 182, 224, 238 drives, 14, 15, 27, 176, 179, 222 duree, 6, 13, 14, 16, 17, 22 ears, 135,236 eating, 112 enchantment, 4, in, 117, 122, 129, 145, 195,2.19 enjoyment, 2, 9, 33, 34, 43, 49, 70, 11516, 131-32, 148, 167, 174, 180, 188, 189, 220, 235; and happiness, 31, 212, 236, 241; hilarity, 15, 167; and humor, 108; joy, 123, 223, 233, 234; laughter, 15, 109, in, 112, 123, 129, 143, 148, 157, 158, 164, 165, 167, 203; pleasure,

49, no, 116, 126-27, i3 I -32-> 148, 153, 158, 175, 181 entanglement, 14-16, 25, 66, 194 error, 4, 230 excess, 15, 102, 105, 117, 143, i47~49, 167, 176, 239 existence, 5, 12, 13, 15-17, 25, 33, 37, 47, 67, 133, 143, 146, 149, 155, 159, 174, 176-78, 180, 183, 187-91, 196, 197, 199, 201, 204, 205, 209, 210, 224, 225, 236, 238-40 experience, 16, 17, 27, 32, 125, 144, 153, 156, 159, 160, 205, 223, 229, 230 eyes, 114, 135,234,236 fable, 117, 118 facticity, 3, 165 familiarity, 2, 27, 28, 104, 160, 229, 237 fantasm, 212, 213, 217, 225, 226, 230, 231,241 fantasy, 4, 7, 49, 107, 109, 118, 119, 146, 148, 160, 165, 182, 184, 207 feminine, 220 fetish, 103, 104, 108, 109, in, 121, 123, 129, 134, 136, 177 fiction, n, 15, 17, in, 118, 123, 159, 180, 198, 242 figure, 14, 15, 23, 62, 120, 173, 223, 228,239-41 flesh, 2, 17, 115, 126-27, I49> I5I? I57» 160, 167, 174, 175, 178, 185, 193, 194, 198-201, 221, 240

freedom, 14, 21, 29, 34, 36, 37, 174, 192 genitality, 220, 221 geography, 204, 207, 229 gift, 34, 54, 140 girls, 175 god/s, 8, 112, 177, 212-32 God/s, 14, 136, 176, 181, 217, 218, 226, 232,233 government, 13, 15, 24, 32, 33, 43, 51, 67, 72, 74, 77, 80, 81, 84, 86, 118, 169, 208, 217, 218, 225, 227; venality in, 49 hallucination, 118, 143, 164, 165, 167, 213, 222

idolatry, 108, 109, 207, 214, 239 image, 2, 12, 15, 26, 36, 37, 60, 103, 105, 108-10, 120-21, 142, 143, 145-

47, 159, 164, 168, 176, 177, 188, 223, 228, 240 imaginary, 19, 25, 31, 33, 34, 37, 39, 40,

Index 42, 43, 55, 56, 79, 87, 102., 112, 117, 146, 173, 175, 182, 2.06, 2.2.6, 229, 231, 242 imagination, 15, 156, 159, 164, 171, 185, 188 immortality, 224, 225 invisible, 76, 131, 145, 203, 223, 243

Jews, n, 214, 226 language, 3-7, 9, 15, 25, 31, 57, 93, in, 136, 142-45, I47? 148, 168, 169, 175, 178, 179, 181, 182, 198, 223, 227-31, 236,237,242 libido, 15, 212, 213, 227, 231 life, 2, 7, 8, 13, 15, 25, 28, 30, 46, 67, 81, 92, 112, 116, 140, 145, 146, 155, 160, 179, 181, 182, 186, 190, 192, 193, 195-98, 200, 202, 204, 205, 210, 224, 223, 228, 229, 2 3 5 , 242

limits, 225 madness, 3, 4, 8, 15, 19, 116, 133, 167, 178, l 8 l , 197, 203, 220, 221, 230, 231,233,242

male, 220, 236 market, 6, 7, 10, 31, 32, 40, 41, 52, 53, 57, 67, 68, 72, 74-80, 83, 86, 88, 90, 96, 178 masculine, 212 masks, 77, 79, 108, 144, 145, 184, 108, 144, 145, 184, 239-41 master, 27, 31, 37, 177, 192, 193, 207, 219 miracle, 10, 189 mirror, 102, 145, 178, 239-41 moment, 7, 73, 155, 180, 222 monotheism, 71, 213-15, 217, 226, 232, 2-33 mouth, 17, 107, 114, 126, 127, 131-32, 157, 166, 181, 236 movements, 3, 176, 239 murder, 27, 36, 50, 72, 174, 226 native, 26, 28, 32-35, 40, 58, 59, 113, 137, 167, 175, 181, 183, 187, 188, 190, 193, 197-99, ^04, 207, 208, 235, 236, 240; indigenat, 28; indigene, 28, 31, 33, 51, 59, 76, 87; indigenization, 68 Negro, 176, 178, 180, 185, 193, 194, 201, 207, 209

night, 131, 153, 173, 174, 194, 196 nightmare, 12, 153, 167, 205 non-being, 4, 9, 144, 145 non-death, 226

2-73 nothing, 164, 174, 187-89, 215, 235, 241 nothingness, 4, 9, 19, 174, 182, 188, 189, 192, 199, 229, 239 obscenity, n, 102-5, 107, 115, 117-18, 128, 131, 133 obscure, 182, 239, 241 One, 212-14, 2.17-20, 226, 230 orgasm, 106, 233 pain, 148, 212, 221, 234 penetration, 106, 123, 179 penis, no, 112, 123, 126, 127, 131-32, 158, 166, 221 phallic domination, 13, 175; of women, 13 phallus, 13, 106, 107, 126, 153, 175, 220,232 plot, 119, 197, 198 postcolonial, 17, 22, 24-26, 28, 31, 3*, 39, 4i, 43, 45, 5*, 54, 5^, 57, 7^, 80, 84, 86, 88, 103-5, I07, III-> I][3, 119, 123, 125, 127-30, 138, 140, 143, 146 postcolony, 14, 15, 101, 102-4, 108-18, 120-21, 125-28, 131, 133, 134, 143, 165, 167, 171,201,247 potentate, 15, 34, 42-44, 56, 84, 148, 165 powerlessness, 7, 8, 13 present, 17, 33, 143, 224 prices, 53 privilege, 30, 43, 46, 49, 75, 80, 83, 115 profit, 66, 90, 100, 113 property, 227, 234, 235, 237 race, 12, 18, 29, 58 rationalism, 10 rationality, i, 7-9, 10-11, 17, 24, 25, 31, 40, 44, 119, 136, 187, 228 reason, 3, 4, 7, n, 12, 14, 17, 19, 20, 22, 24, 34, 136, 147, 176, 187, 191, 207,209,210

(re)/colonization/ing, 12, 15, 24, 28, 30, 3i, 34, 43, 59, 74, 86, 102, 123, 136, 143, 146, 174, 183, 188, 193, 197, 201, 237

redemption, 222 resistance, 20, 34, 37, 91, 103, no, in, 128, 129, 135 resurrection, 212, 220, 224-26, 231 rights, subjective, 37 road, 203 sacrifice, 70, 95 salvation, 212, 215, 222, 227, 229, 231

Index

2-74

self, 2, 4, 6, 12, 42,, 140, 185, 187, 2.2.1, 2.2.6, 229, 239 servitude, 14, 27, 82., 83 sex, 2.26 sexuality, 13, 31, 113, 2,12, 220, 221, 231 shade, 145, 160, 204 shadow, 9, 50, 77, 85, 160, 165, 179, 182, 196, 197, 199, 201, 203, 204, 220,

223,

224,

237,

2.40, 241, 247

shit, 107, 167 sign, 1-4, 15, 102, 103, 107, 108, in, 129, 142-44, 153, 156, 159, 164, 165, 223, 227, 230, 240, 241 signification, 2, 15, 19, 36, 47, 167 signifier, 2, 142, 167, 223, 226 sites, 7, 42, 75, 131-32, 155 slave, 13, 14, 27, 29, 31, 69, 70, 72, 174, 186, 189, 192, 193, 2.07, 208, 219, 2-35-37> 2.46 slavery, 12, 33,71,72,95 soldiers, 50, 80, in, 158, 169, 174 soldiery, 83, 123-24 something, 164, 187, 189, 204, 235, 241 sovereignty, 10, 13, 25, 26, 29, 31, 32, 34-36, 70, 72, 74, 76-78, 80, 89-92, 100, 127, 149, 183, 189, 191, 214, 217, 218, 227; circular nature of, 32; cruelty of, 34 spectacle, 239 stagnation, 69, 73 subject, 5, 6, 10, 12, 14, 15, 17, 23, 24, 28, 33, 58, 59, 62, 89-94, 104, 107, 118, 125, 128, 129, 134, 143, 160, 165, 167-69, 173, 175, 178, 182, 186-88, 190, 191, 210, 213, 229

subjection, 14, 24, 28, 31, 33, 35, 36, 40, 41, 45, 48, 74, 77, 84, 92-, 103, 108, 164, 167, 175 subjectivity, 3, 7, 9, 15, 156, 169, 181, 189, 214 suicide, 27, 174, 197, 226 superstition, 14, 15, 242 tangible, 26, 153, 166, 241 tax(es), 6, 29, 30, 36, 47, 67-69, 72, 80-86, 88-94, 101, no, 125, 147 tears, 223 technology, 52, 79, 221, 233 temporality, 15, 73, 221, 229, 230 territories, 30, 31, 40, 69-71, 85-88, 92, 100, 134, 183 terror/horror, 13, 14, 46, 69, 90, 140, 143, !53> i67> I74> J 75> 177, 189, 242 things, 3, 15, 24, 26, 27, 29, 31, 34, 45, 46, 81, 118, 142-45, 148, 153, 156,

160, 164-66, 168, 173, 174, 186-89, 191, 192, 209, 215, 235, 239-41 time, 4, 8, 9, n, 14-17, 25, 45, 47, 53, 66, 71, 73, 89, 107, 120, 129, 135, 144, I 5 5 > J 77> !79> *97, 2.14, 217, 224-26, 231, 237 tragedy, 8 transfers, 39, 45-48, 5^ 7^ 75> 78, 84, 88 truth, 3, 4, 108, 109, 121, 159, 160, 179, 192, 215, 225, 230, 231, 241, 242 unhappiness, 212, 238 unreason, 4, 7, 12; fable as form of, 4 utilities, 29, 34-36, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 49, 51, 68, 69,71,78,90,95 venality, 237, 240 victim, 107, 148 violence, 39, 43, 55, 57, 102, 105, 107, no, 115-16, 118, 123-24, 133, 143, 145, 158, 160, 165, 173-75, J 8o83, 188-90, 192, 209, 214, 215, 224, 228-30; of arbitrariness, 13, 17; circle as result of, 13; of colonial sovereignty, 25, 26; in the colony, 28, 30, 31; of economics, 67-70, 72, 75-77, 101; market as violent, 5, 6; and the native, 33, 34; in postcolonial Africa, 45, 48, 50, 51, 54, 79,- 83, 85-92; in society, 36,38 virginity, 127, 175, 176 visible, 144-46, 158, 180, 203, 241, 243 vulgarity, 38, no, 118, 128, 133

war, 8, 25, 29, 30, 32, 33, 36, 40, 54, 68-70, 71-74, 77, 82, 87-91, 93, 96, 216 wealth, 17, 19, 24, 33, 35, 45, 49, 50, 56,70,78,90,93 wife, 198 woman, no, 112, 137, 153, 158, 197, 202,

220

work, 29, 30, 45, 54, 82, 117, 120, 159, 189 world, 1-4, 8, 9, n, 12, 17-19, 26-28, 57, 67, 68, 76, 88, 100, 107, 109, 144, 145, 148, 156, 159, 177, 179, 182., 190, 191, 193, 201, 205,

213, 2 1 5 ,

2l8, 222, 224, 225, 227, 228, 230, 239,

240,

242

wounds, 221, 234 writing, 14, 15, 147, 164, 224, 242 zombification, 104