L’autobiographie intellectuelle de V. Y. Mudimbe et les enjeux de la différence

Authors

Justin Bisanswa, Université de Lubumbashi/Université Laval

Abstract

Based on Les corps glorieux des mots et des êtres. Esquisse d’un jardin africain à la bénédictine, this text would like to analyze, at the confluence of sociology and rhetoric, the modalities (with their variations and their extensions) by which V. Y. Mudimbe broadens intellectual autobiography to other modes of writing and functions as a dialogic space between poetry and prose, experience and fantasy, reality and imagination. Retracing his pathway, Mudimbe makes his text a journey within oneself, a quest for the “absolute elsewhere” or a quest for the total Self. A feeling of lack emerges which explains this oscillation between fullness and nothingness. Fascinated by the Benedictine life of his past, V. Y. Mudimbe drifts from exhilaration to exhilaration until he reaches this euphoria through the intoxication of emptiness, of the encounter between himself and the depths of his image. By revealing the meanders of the universe and the shreds of History, writing devours and cancels itself, finding its salvation in its narrator through the enormous expansion of a divided I which rebuilds itself and builds bridges in different directions. Perhaps it is a reminder, by producing the marvelous by which to escape the real world and satisfy one’s frustrations, that real flight is out of this world.

Recommended Citation

Bisanswa, Justin (2024) "L’autobiographie intellectuelle de V. Y. Mudimbe et les enjeux de la différence," Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature: Vol. 101: No. 1, Article 4.
Available at: https://crossworks.holycross.edu/pf/vol101/iss1/4