Mudimbe or the Praxis of « Les Mots et les Choses »

By Kasongo M. Kapanga, PhD
University of Richmond, Virginia; 5/1/25
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Professor V. Y. Mudimbe and Pope Francis passed away in the same week, that is, on April 22 and April 28^th, respectively. Mudimbe was many things wrapped up into a tiny, frail, but brainy body. He was a novelist, a poet, an essayist, and one of Africa’s best academics.

Professor V. Y. Mudimbe was born in Jadotville (Likasi), in the Katanga Province, in the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga (later Gécamines) workers’ compound of Panda, where his father was employed as a skilled worker (fitter or ajusteur).

Unlike his peers, Mudimbe received a classical education destined only for those who aspired to enter the priesthood or religious life. After completing his studies at minor seminaries, Mudimbe entered the Benedictine monastery of Gihindamuyaga in Butare (now Huye), Rwanda, taking the religious name of Mathieu. At age 21, he left the monastery to further his education first at Université Lovanium in Kinshasa, and then at Louvain University, Belgium, and finally in France (Nanterre). His itinerary shows that he was the product of the colonial project, as could be inferred from biographical accounts, or his autobiography Les Corps glorieux des mots et des êtres (1994: “J’ai été bien domestiqué […] Je suis un animal bien dressé,”  p. 16. (I have been well domesticated […] I have been trained). His academic career can be divided into two parts: the Zairian or Congolese era and the Euro-American era.

Un Homme de Lettres. The rise of Mudimbe in the Congolese academia coincided with his joining the teaching staff at the Lovanium University in Kinshasa and then Campus de Lubumbashi when President Mobutu merged all the institutions of higher learning under one umbrella called UNAZA (Université Nationale du Zaïre). At the Lubumbashi Campus, as Dean, Mudimbe headed an impressive Faculty de Philosophie et Lettres with professors (Pius Ngandu-Nkashama, Clémentine Nzuji-Faïk, Georges Ngal, Paulin Hountondji, Isidore Ndaywell) who would carry the torch of excellence to other world’s respected academic institutions. He also hosted conferences with prestigious speakers such as Cheik Anta Diop, Théophile Obenga, and worked with scores of illustrious Africans and well-known non-African academics such as Johannes Fabian and Bogumil Jewsiewicki. These scholars’ engagements at the University of Lubumbashi during the 1970s highlighted the institution’s prominence as a center for critical thought and its contribution to the broader intellectual movements in postcolonial Africa that Mudimbe would ultimately radiate in his post-Lubumbashi academic career. It is also during this period that most of his literary works were published, such as Entre les eaux or Between Tides, which put him in a prominent position on the African literary scene. He also emerged as a leading figure in African Philosophy and a sharp analyst of the colonial undertaking, which allowed him to reflect on the relationship between power and knowledge as performed in the framework of European colonization of Africa.

1.Y. Mudimbe has been the best-known and the most studied Congolese writer and remains a towering figure in Congolese literature. Even though he went into exile almost half a century ago, and his academic activities pulled him away from fictional writing, he remains at the forefront. One of his closest collaborators, Professor Pascal Nyunda ya Rubango (University of Creighton), describes him as follows, “not a single label could adequately describe this writer, essayist, and multifaceted professor whom many see as the manifestation of an ‘encyclopedic’ genius.” [Aucune étiquette figée ne saurait adéquatement décrire cet écrivain, essayiste et enseignant polyvalent que d’aucuns considèrent comme manifestation d’un génie « encyclopédique » …] (“Deux écrivains” 249).

Mudimbe was a prolific writer whose comprehensive work straddles many disciplines. His writing becomes a sustained interrogation of the epistemological impetus, not for its own sake, but by gauging its long-term effects on the new Congolese subjectivity with its multi-layered elements accumulated through individual and collective experience. He wrote four novels, namely Between Tides (Entre les eaux, 1973), The Birth of the Moon (Le Bel Immonde, 1976), The Rift (L’Écart, 1973), and Shaba Deux: Les Carnets de la Mère Marie-Gertrude (1985). His poetry collections include Les fuseaux (1973), Déchirures (1971), Entretailles (1973), Fulgurances (1973) and Les Fragments d’un espoir (1976). His fictional works dramatize Congolese characters confronting issues such as the postcolonial malaise, incompetence of post-independence leaders, and identitarian interrogations in decolonized spaces.

Mudimbe wrote several essays that analyze social issues relevant to the Congolese and African postcolonial situations. The Mobutu regime under which he lived fostered an anti-colonial populist ideology to which every Congolese was inescapably urged to adhere. The tenets did not originate organically from commonly lived experiences, but were rather imposed from above. Mudimbe’s inquisitive and reflective mind allowed him to avoid the traps set by political pressure from the regime. Instructed to teach civism as a channel for Mobutist ideas, Mudimbe’s Autour de “La Nation” astutely questions its objectives and practices. 

Haverford, Stanford, and Duke: Mudimbe’s Academic Homes.

Mudimbe taught in three American universities: Haverford in Pennsylvania, Stanford University in California, and Duke University in North Carolina. The Euro-American phase of his career is primarily dominated by his influential academic publications (essays), which, situated at the intersection of several theoretical reflections, are in dialogue with modern European philosophers, where Michel Foucault was in a prominent position. The Invention of Africa (1988, crowned with the 1989 Herskovitz Prize) and The Idea of Africa (1994) were two seminal essays marking his extraordinary academic career in the United States.  In The Invention of Africa, Mudimbe analyzed the colonial act and its consequences in the postcolonial era. Critics have legitimately seen this work as an attempt to bridge Western systems of knowledge and colonized societies’ gnostic systems to resolve the conflictual relationships that presided over the forced encounter. The sequel, The Idea of Africa (1994), underlines moments and genealogical elements that led him to what he had become. Mudimbe is a universal thinker and someone whose influence has spread beyond his native DRC to reach global academic circles.

Nevertheless, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is mourning one of its prized sons who ironically shed light on the very problems that are assailing the stability of the nation.