Identity politics/Reading Notes

[Kenneth Mostern]

1. African philosophy. A real Jesuit scholar, Y. Mudimbe has written some
very helpful volumes. And I think what he has to say about Levy-Bruhl's
theory of primitive mentality and Evan-Pritchard's witchcraft studies is
thought-provoking. Sorry for no complete cites-- the books  are in my
companion the professor's office. Suffice to say, there is a substantial
body of philosophical work on the nature of anthropology and
anthropological discourse (including a a study written in the analytical
philosophical mode which is touted by Anthony Appiah). Ato Sekyi-Oto
Fanon's Dialectic of Experience has been recommended to me, and Ernest
Wambab-dia-Wamba's essays on the African palaver are interesting. 
If I remember correctly, John StC's collegue Kwasi Wiredu has written
thoughtfully  about violence in African political thought; so I hope John
keeps us abreast about the volume KW is editing. 

Mudimbe wrote the fine The Invention of Africa (Indiana U.P. 1987).  And Sekyi-Otu's book is not only the finest on Fanon by far--I've read all of them--but the best defense/explication of narrative as a marxist practice written by anyone in the 1990s.  (Jameson's work in the 1970s and 1980s is also associated with this.)

Kenneth Mostern
Department of English
University of Tennessee

"Talent is perhaps nothing other than successfully sublimated rage."

	Theodor Adorno

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