The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge

Transmodern heritage as a space for imagining pluriversal relations—Insights from the African “periphery”

“…The European powers spread their colonial structures in Africa to acquire land, exploit labor and control the economy of the colonies, while at the same time subduing the beings, the minds and the knowledges of the people, turning the continent into a European construct. By use of Western epistemologies and hermeneutics, they “invented Africa” (Mudimbe, 1988), defining the limits and trajectories of its progress, its aesthetics, ethics, and imagery. In the early stages of colonization, the experience of life of African peoples was represented as “instances of a frozen state in the evolution of humankind” (Mudimbe, 1988, p. 107).…”

“…By use of Western epistemologies and hermeneutics, they “invented Africa” (Mudimbe, 1988), defining the limits and trajectories of its progress, its aesthetics, ethics, and imagery. In the early stages of colonization, the experience of life of African peoples was represented as “instances of a frozen state in the evolution of humankind” (Mudimbe, 1988, p. 107). Within this paternalistic approach, African people were believed to be “stuck in tradition” or were subjected to civilizing missions meant to bring progress to the colonized.…”

No More “Solutionism” or “Saviourism” in Futuring African HCI: A Manyfesto

“…First, there is the need to recognise how the process of invention emerges from a particular way of thinking about reality and in particular an abyssal style of thinking about other cultures and values. One might argue that the invention of Africa as an established trope was developed on an imperial imaginary that sought to dissolve empires and territories with the purpose of economic exploitation and political domination [126] Therefore, inventions that were imagined on coloured (black and white) and epistemic lines (traditional vs scientific) would ultimately define and discipline. Even the pan-Africanist and nationalist construction of a wholesome Africa that consisted of independent republics was engineered on a grand design style that seeks to unite fragmented entities but instead goes further in staging local groups or communities into nation-states that triumph in cultural synthesis and dismemberment' [116].…”

“…In design spaces, such informality biases can be identified in the way specific design projects perpetuate a particular view of prosperity and progression albeit on neoliberal political appeals that view Africa (and African s) as social predicaments to be judged, decided, and confronted [135]. This led to the assertion that problem-solution as pairs represent a political position that 3 In identity politics, the shift in subjectivities from character to personality has shown how the invention of the African subject matters as an established trope changes in pre-colonial and post-colonial times [126] particularly from a largely Utilitarian (concern with desire) and Kantian (concern with autonomy) identities to combative tropes of self-imagined identities (concern with the care of the self). Some have argued that the earlier constitution of the African proper was concerned with building character by confirming to customary values as a way of belonging to/or becoming a member of an ethnic grouping.…”

Privileged observers and colonial continuities

“…When I did my graduate fieldwork, we were aware of postcolonial critiques in the textual tradition (Clifford & Marcus, 1986; Mudimbe, 1982) and of work acknowledging the colonial history of British anthropology (Asad, 1973). But we practiced anthropology almost exactly as colonial‐era anthropologists did, albeit with fewer resources (Kuklick, 2011, p. 32).…”