V.Y. Mudimbe: The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge (1988) [EN, PT]

“In this unique and provocative book, Zairean philosopher and writer V. Y. Mudimbe addresses the multiple scholarly discourses that exist—African and non-African—concerning the meaning of Africa and being African.”

“Western anthropology and missionaries have introduced distortions not only for outsiders but also for Africans trying to understand themselves. Mudimbe goes beyond the classic issues of African anthropology or history. He says that the book attempts an archeology of African gnosis as a system of knowledge in which major philosophical questions recently have arisen: first, concerning the form, the content, and the style of Africanizing knowledge; second, concerning the status of traditional systems of thought. He is directly concerned with the processes of transformation of different types of knowledge.”

Publisher Indiana University Press, 1988
ISBN 0253331269, 9780253331267
xii+241 pages

Reviews: Christopher Gray (Int’l J of African Hist Studies, 1989), Paul Stoller (Am Anthropologist, 1989), Ladislav Holy (Man, 1989), Steven Feierman (J African Hist, 1991), Amselle Jean-Loup (Cahiers d’études africaines, 1991, FR).
Commentary: Marlene M. Archie (n.d.), Ali A. Mazrui (Research in African Lit, 2005).

Publisher
WorldCat

The Invention of Africa (English, 1988, 31 MB)
A invenção de África (Portuguese, trans. Ana Medeiros, 2013, 71 MB)