VIOLENCE in/and the GREAT LAKES

Violence in/and the Great Lakes: The Thought of V.Y. Mudimbe and Beyond is, in the best sense of the term, a homage to Valentin Mudimbe. This collection of essays honours the intellectual legacy of Mudimbe, for decades now one of Africa and the diaspora’s most significant minds, by taking up the challenges – ethical, political, philosophical, literary, sociological, anthropological, psychological – his work poses. This book gathers a group of US- and Africa-based scholars, many of whom are long-time Mudimbe collaborators and colleagues, who use the questions posed, the critiques and insights offered and the paradigms constructed by Mudimbe’s oeuvre to understand the implication – and, in some instances, the application – of Mudimbe’s work in our moment.

In this way, the project is true to Mudimbe’s deepest commitment because the collection, for all the range of its contributions, for all the variegated and often dissonant – yet resonant – ways in which the authors take up Mudimbe’s thinking, never strays too far from the historic question of violence and the effects of that violence in the Great Lakes region of Africa; and, indeed, of violence in Africa itself. This is, in every important way, the founding inquiry of Mudimbe’s work, and it is sustained in this collection; and, as importantly, it is given new life, new philosophical shape, new political impetus, because it is a question that continues to haunt Mudimbe’s writing and, of course, the continent itself. In so honouring Mudimbe, this book is grounded in a key contribution by Mudimbe himself. Mudimbe is thus, as has long been his wont, reflecting upon his work in the company of those scholars whose work he has influenced and whom, it is clear, have been important interlocutors for Mudimbe.

Contributors: Justin K. Bisanswa, Ngwarsungu Chiwengo, Grant Farred, Olga Hél-Bongo, Kasereka Kavwahirehi, Laura Kerr, V-Y Mudimbe, Leonhard Praeg and Zubairu Wai.