“ VY M udimbe: from the ‘Nation’ to the ‘Global’ – ‘Who is the Master?' ”

Abstract This article examines V alentin Y ves M udimbe's work form the early 1970s, in the neo‐colonial era, to the present day, a period marked by the advent of “ E mpire”, as conceived by M ichael H ardt and T oni N egri. The investigation appraises the way in which M udimbe's epistemological excavation of A frican discourses and discourses about A frica serves wider ethical and political objectives resonating with critiques of anthropology as formulated by B enoît V erhaegen and J ohannes F abian in the 1960s and 1970s. Part I focuses on Z airian nationalism (“Zairianization”) and the ambition, on the part of the M obutu regime, to develop an authentic national culture. This examination of the birth of a Z airian “community” is developed through a comparison between M udimbe's little‐studied Autour de la “nation ” (1972) and K angafu K utumbagana's D iscours sur l'authenticité (1973) and is argued on the basis of a number of propositions formulated by J ean‐ L uc N ancy in T he I noperative C ommunity (1991). The second part of the article focuses on M udimbe's O n A frican Fault Lines (2013); it examines M udimbe's attempts, in his analyses of contemporary works by D eepa R ajkumar and G eert H ofstede, to reflect on globalization and to assess the political and ethical relevance of critical tools developed in the neo‐colonial period to denounce the unequal basis of anthropology.