Date: Mon, 22 Jul 1996 16:25:59 -0400
From: Kapanga Kasongo <kasongo-AT-urvax.urich.edu>
Subject: Re: Mudimbe


At 03:32 PM 7/22/96 -0400, you wrote:
>
>Azfar Hussein wrote:
>
>>By the way, have you read Mudimbe's narrative called _The Rift_? How do you
>>find it?
>
>Actually, I have -The Rift- sitting right on my desk in my huge pile of
>ought-to-reads. It's somewhere in the middle; should I move it towards the
>top, or leave it where it is? How valuable did you find it?
>
>
>
I had the chance to read this novel with students in a class I team-taught
with two of my colleagues entitled "Constructions of identity." As a journal
written by a schizophrenic mind whose vision is blurred by all kinds of
lived experiences and realities, it seems to quite nicely foreshadow, in our
understanding, the problematic question of the epistemological primacy in
the way to assess and make Africa's genealogical fragmented past
understandable . Nara, the main character, seems hard pressed in his search
to recapture that past using the expertise of a  modern historian laboring
in the vaults of knowledge (Bibliotheque Nationale). The bridge he attempts
to erectss in trying to mediate between this frozen past emptied of its
genealogical relevance and new modern exigencies cracks at every move he
makes. The novel raises many important questions related to the legacy of
relationships between societies, cultures ... that, from the start, were
premised on wrong assumptions. How should such a bridge be constructed
without causing an avalanche? That seems a daunting task awaiting any
endeavor to "construct" the "new" Africa...

Kasongo K.
University of Richmond
>



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