Beyond the Singularity of Subordination

Césaire and Mbembe on “the work of man”

Abstract

This paper examines how Achille Mbembe draws upon, then iterates from, the work of Aimé Césaire to provide a rich analysis of personhood in contemporary Africa. Typically, African treatments of Mbembe’s theorization place considerable emphasis on the intellectual influence of Frantz Fanon, rightly so. And while Fanon does have a central role in Mbembe’s writing, arguably it is Césaire who prompts Mbembe to conceptually insist upon the historical malleability of racial classification, racial civic ascription, and racial subjective comprehension as these social forms are reshaped by historical development. In tracing the development of these aspects of Mbembe’s social and political thought, this paper discusses the bisections and points of departures with Césaire’s poetry and philosophy as it pertains to the notion of Blackness. Effectively the dialectical encounter with Césaire and the Caribbean situation helps give rise to Mbembe’s main conclusion that there is a severe limitation to Black Reasoning, especially when its discursive referents give preference to a sublime singularity over the mutable.