Abstract
What are the pre-conditions of making truth claims about phenomena in Africa? In this article I seek to outline a few basic presuppositions, which have enabled discourses on matters in Africa, making them coincide with something real by creating and reconfiguring their referents, while rendering others invisible. From a perspective influenced by my training in the history and anthropology of Africa in Paris, I particularly deal with the lasting impact of Enlightenment thought, cultural and functionalist anthropology and the ideas of French colonial officials. An examination of how the overdeterminations of the object “Africa” could be escaped involves an assessment of the ideas of Valentin Y. Mudimbe, Jean-Loup Amselle, Achille Mbembe and Johannes Fabian.
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