‘Provisional Notes on the Postcolony’ in Congo Studies: An Overview of Themes and Debates

This article considers the uptake of Achille Mbembe’s article Provisional Notes on the Postcolony (1992), the book De la Postcolonie: essai sur l’imagination politique dans l’Afrique contemporain (2000), and its translated version, On the Postcolony (2001), in Congo studies. ‘Congo’ here is a shorthand for the current Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly known as Zaire. I am concerned with the ways in which these two texts (and their French original versions) figure in the social sciences and the humanities whose main field of study is Zairian/Congolese society and culture.

Publication year:2022

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