Mudimbe’s Order of Things - Part I

Les choses et les mots de Mudimbe is an interview with Valentin Yves Mudimbe, a philosopher and philologist by training, born in 1941 in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. One of the most important African intellectuals of the 20th century, Mudimbe has contributed to the deconstruction of Western (post)modernism and the decolonization of knowledge, following Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1966) and Edward Saïd’s Orientalism (1978). Bekolo provides an insight into the man and his way of life, as well as his commitments, through a 243-minute face-to-face, penetrating interview during which the camera is rarely at rest, also studying Mudimbe’s books, objects and surroundings. The Cameroonian philosopher’s reflections focus on the lessons we can learn from philosophers and thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and Patrice Lumumba, from Mudimbe s unusual perspective. In his first documentary, Bekolo plunges intensely into the powerful cosmogony of Mudimbe, continuing to question the meaning of the existence of beings and things,  philosopher-to-philosopher.

Part II will be screened on April 21, at 7PM.