Parables and Fables: Exegesis, Textuality, and Politics in Central Africa

This remarkable book confronts the philosophical problems of otherness and identity through readings of the parables and fables of a colonized people, the Luba of Zaire. V. Y. Mudimbe poses two overarching questions: how can one think about and comment upon alterity without essentializing its features? And, is it possible to speak and write about an African tradition or its contemporary practice without taking into account the authority of the colonial library that has invented African iden...