Notions of Africanity

This chapter engages the notions of Africanity found in V.Y. Mudimbe’s work. While his The Idea of Africa traces notions of Africanity within a variety of historical archives, the chapter argues that a transdisciplinary element is present in the work and that this tension between transdisciplinarity and philosophical tendencies undoubtedly endows his project with an uncommon energy, texture, and tonality. Mudimbe also investigates the Colonial Library—a concept he has vigorously explored—in relation to Africa. Ideas about Africa have been mediated by many factors and different ideologies, paradigms, cultures, and civilizations. Hence, it is possible to track different genealogies of the idea of Africa starting from Greek and Roman times through the Christian Dark Ages, the Renaissance, modern European imperialism, Atlantic slavery, colonisation, and the so-called age of Enlightenment. This chapter interrogates the implications of this argument and concludes that the idea of Africa is enmeshed in these various epochs such that it is not appropriate to dwell on a single idea of Africa.