Achille Mbembe

Professor of History and Politics and researcher at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER) of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Born in Cameroon in 1957, he taught History at Columbia University (New York) and the University of Pennsylvania and has also directed the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), based in Dakar. He is a well-known author, both for his articles in the Spanish versions of Le Monde Diplomatique and for his contributions to the books coordinated by Gilles Kepel, The Politics of God (The Proliferation of the Divine in Sub-Saharan Africa); Jérôme Bindé, Where do Values Go: 21^st Century Talks (“On Racism as a Practice of the Imagination”); Fernando López Castellano, Development: Chronicle of a Permanent Challenge (“Power, Violence and Accumulation”); and Okwui Enwezor, Lo desacogedor. Escenas fantasmas en la sociedad global (“Necropolítica”). He also published the influential book De la postcolonie, essai sur l’imagination politique dans l’Afrique contemporaine (‘On the Postcolony’, 2000).