An incomprehensible miracle' - Central African clerical intellectualism versus African historic religion

A close reading of Valentin Mudimbe'sTales of Faith

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2145253
AutoresWim Van Binsbergen (a African Studies Centre , Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam , Leiden)
Año2005
Volumen17
Número1
Páginas11-65
Fecha de publicación2005-06-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of African Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1369-6815 • E-ISSN: 1469-9346
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0090988052000344638
OpenAlexW2114238144
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas36

This piece seeks to address Mudimbe as one of the great creative cosmopolitan minds of our times. The abundance of autobiographical detail in his oeuvre allows me to situate him in a particular social and intellectual context. I read his oeuvre as a sustained attempt at autobiographical self-definition. I concentrate on Mudimbe's Tales of Faith (1997), and show this book to be an intellectual and spiritual autobiography disguised as a detached history of ideas of Central African intellectuals and their work and aftermath in the twentieth century. I look at Mudimbe from two different perspectives: the historical and anthropological study of Central African religion as an established academic sub-discipline (which he virtually ignores), and African historic religion (which does not play a role either in his personal self-construction). I will be very critical, mainly because the fundamental issues of Africa and of African studies today manifest themselves around Mudimbe as a central and emblematic figure. After identifying and discussing Mudimbe's discursive methods as essentially poetical (under the guise of modern philosophy) I shall try to pinpoint what Tales of Faith is about (i.e. the adventure of clerical intellectualism in Central Africa during the twentieth century), what meta-contents it contains (i.e. homelessness as Mudimbe's central predicament), and what all this means for the practice and the study of African historic religion, the uninvited guest of Tales of Faith and of Mudimbe's work in general. This will allow me to critique Mudimbe's quest for universalism which, in my opinion, seduces him to court the very European hegemonism he of all people has so clearly exposed, and to ignore such a way out of his predicament as the cultivation of an African identity and of African historic religion might have offered him. Finally, I will compare Mudimbe's itinerary with my own; our two paths will turn out to have been amazingly parallel even if they appear to have ended in opposite destinations

Adventure · Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Context (archaeology · Epistemology · Faith · Intellectualism · Literature · Politics · Sociology · Theology · Universalism · African cultural and philosophical studies · African history and culture analysis · Anthropological Studies and Insights · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious Studies