He was born in the Belgian Congo, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As a young man, he joined a monastery, but left in 1962 in order to study the forces that shaped African history. He studied in Louvain (PhD, 1970), came back to Congo and flew to the United States in 1979 for political reasons. He has taught at Haverford College and Stanford University, and is now Professor Emeritus in the Program in Literature at Duke University.[3] His work has had a major impact on many disciplines including African studies, Philosophy, Sociology, Anthropology, Linguistics, Literature, and History.
Work
Mudimbe's work is considered as highly influential for African studies, notably for his major book The Invention of Africa (1988).[4] His writings transformed the intellectual history of Africa by challenging the dominant historic reconstruction of Greek philosophy which according to him was racialised. The influence of Mudimbe's writings for African studies was compared to that of Edward Said's book Orientalism for postcolonial studies.[5] Mudimbe showed that without critiquing the epistemologies which were the basis of the discourses about Africa critical approaches can become fruitless.[6] He received the Herskovits Award given by African Studies Association in 1989.
Mudimbe focuses most closely on phenomenology, structuralism, mythical narratives, and the practice and use of language. As a professor, he has taught courses on these topics, as well as on ancient Greek cultural geography.
Education
Junior College Degree, Lovanium University, Leopoldville (Kinshasa), Congo (1962)
Entre les eaux (1973); trans. as Between Tides by Stephen Baker (1991)
Entretailles (1973)
L'Autre Face du royaume (1973)
Les Fuseaux (1974)
Le Bel immonde (1976); trans. as Before the Birth of the Moon by Marjolijn de Jager (1989)
L'Ecart (1979); trans. as The Rift by Marjolijn de Jager (1993)
Shaba deux (1988)
Les Corps glorieux des mots et des êtres (1994)
Essays
The Mudimbe Reader, Edited by Pierre-Philippe Fraiture and Daniel Orrells, University of Virginia Press.
L'Odeur du père, Présence Africaine (1982)
The Invention of Africa : Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge, Indiana University Press (1988)
Parables and Fables : Exegesis Textuality and Politics in Central Africa, The University of Wisconsin Press (1991)
The Surreptitious Speech: Presence Africaine and the Politics of Otherness 1947-1987, University of Chicago Press (1992)
Africa & the Disciplines, coeditor, University of Chicago Press (1993)
The Idea of Africa, African Systems of Thought, Indiana University Press, (1994)
Tales of Faith: Religion as Political Performance in Central Africa, Athlone Press (1997)
Nations, Identities, Cultures, editor, Duke University Press (1997)
Diaspora and Immigration, coeditor, South Atlantic Quarterly special issue, Duke University Press (1999)
The Normal & Its Orders, coeditor, Editions Malaïka (2007)
On African Fault Lines: Meditations on Alterity Politics, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press (2013)
Secondary literature
In English
White fathers in colonial central Africa : a critical examination of V.Y. Mudimbe's theories on missionary discourse in Africa Friedrich Stenger, Münster : London : Lit, 2002.
V.Y. Mudimbe, ou, Le discours, l'écart et l'écriture, Bernard Mouralis, Présence Africaine, Paris, 1988
Le roman africain face aux discours hégémoniques : étude sur l'énonciation et l'idéologie dans l'œuvre de V.Y. Mudimbe, Jean-Christophe Luhaka A. Kasende, L'harmattan 2001.
L'Afrique au miroir des littératures, des sciences de l'homme et de la société : mélanges offerts à V.Y. Mudimbe, Kasende, Jean-Christophe Luhaka A, L'harmattan, 2003.
V.Y. Mudimbe et la ré-invention de l'Afrique: poétique et politique de la décolonisation des sciences humaines, Kasereka Kavwhairehi, éditions Rodopi, 2006.
Pour un nouvel ordre africain de la connaissance : hommage à V.Y. Mudimbe sous la direction de Alphonse Mbuyamba-Kankolongo, Paris, 2011.
University of Cambridge – lecture announcement which explains some of Mudimbe's beliefs (especially about the social sciences) and gives some biographical information