°Reconciling one’s self

March 25, 2008

An extract from Mbembe’s “Passages to Freedom: The Politics of Racial Reconciliation in South Africa” (Public Culture, 20:1, 2008):

Filed under: Biowar + Democracy + Mbembe
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°Frontiers, contracts and race

March 6, 2008

Three texts - as is obvious, written at the same time (August-September 2007), and which unwrap as an onion might: “Notes on the Frontiers and Borders of the Postcolony” (in the new Sarai Reader: Frontiers as a pdf, though there’s also a hardcopy of the edition); “The Failure of Political Theology” (a review of Achille Mbembe’s On the Postcolony and Forrest Hylton’s, Evil Hour in Colombia) at metamute; and “The Materialisation of Race in Multiculture”, in darkmatter’s new edition, Race/Matter. The last of these is the most pithy, but they neverthless form something of a trilogy, written as they were under the shock of the Intervention.

[Pocket’s remix of Kristin Hersh’s Slippershell, just because I’m enjoying that combination of squishynote earcandy and guitar/voice earbleed right now. It’s a compelling mix. Northsea’s remix is kind of ok, but doesn’t push it, really. And the flakeout remix is, well, a soporific.]

Filed under: Biowar + Borders + Virno + Mbembe + theologico-politico
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°Temporality, geopolity

September 1, 2007

According to Hegel, Africa is a land of unchanging substance and dazzling disorder, the joyful and tragic country in Creation. Black people, as we see them today, are as they have always been. In the immense energy of the natural arbitrariness that dominates them, neither the moral moment, nor ideas of freedom, justice and progress have any place or particular status. Whoever wants to discover the most appalling manifestations of human nature can find them in Africa. Strictly speaking, this part of the world has no history. What we understand, in short, going by the name of Africa, is an ahistoric, undeveloped world, entirely prisoner of its natural spirit and whose place remains on the threshold of universal history.

- from Mbembe’s “Nicolas Sarkozy’s Africa” (trans. M. Thackway, and via).

Filed under: Biowar + Hegel + Mbembe
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°The gift of colonisation

August 25, 2007



[Recent television ad for right-wing newspaper, The Australian.]

In the chapter “Of Commandment”, Mbembe turns over some significant dispositions of colonial sovereignty. On one of those, he writes:

Filed under: Nationalism + Rights + Mbembe
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°tRACE

December 15, 2006


Fred Moten ………Achille Mbembe …Etienne Balibar ….Tina Chanter
[quicktime videos - tRACEs conference, 2003]

Filed under: Biowar + Balibar + Mbembe
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°Necro-economics

January 20, 2006

Craig already mentioned Warren Montag’s piece, “Necro-economics: Adam Smith and Death in the Life of the Universal”, in the latest Radical Philosophy. Here, Montag begins by proposing a reading of Adam Smith, in the manner of Althusser’s reading of Capital - and those familiar with Althusser will quickly make out Montag’s powerfully conjunctural reading of Smith’s universality, of economic theodicy and consciousness, and the distribution of life (and death).

Filed under: Necropolitics + Montag + Smith + Mbembe
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°Emergent z world

October 24, 2005

Four remarks on an emergent z world

Filed under: Precarious precarity + Borders + Escape + Schmitt + Mbembe
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