African Contemporary Art: Negotiating the Terms of Recognition - Interview of Vivian Paulissen with Achille Mbembe

African Contemporary Art: Negotiating the Terms of Recognition - Interview of Vivian Paulissen with Achille Mbembe I hate the idea that African life is simple bare life - the life of an empty stomach and a naked body waiting to be fed, clothed, healed or housed. It is a conception that is embedded in "development" ideology and practice. It radically goes against people's own daily experience with the immaterial world of the spirit, especially as it manifests itself under conditions of extreme precariousness and radical uncertainty. This kind of metaphysical and ontological violence has long been a fundamental aspect of the fiction of development the West seeks to impose on those it has colonized. We must oppose it and resist such surreptitious forms of dehumanization.

Mukanda

09.06.2010 | by Achille Mbembe