Achille Mbembe is Research Professor in History and Politics at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He is author of Necropolitics and Critique of Black Reason and coeditor of Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis, all also published by Duke University Press.
Brutalism
Achille Mbembe
“This is a fantastic translation of a vital text. The poetry, intensity, complexity, and subtlety that we have come to expect from Achille Mbembe’s work are all here in Brutalism.” - Laurent Dubois, translator of, Critique of Black Reason
“In an argument both elegant and urgent, Achille Mbembe focuses our attention on the African continent, which is not only where the forms of domination and deprivation that increasingly affect the entire globe are most fully deployed but also where the forms of reparation necessary for a future world can be glimpsed.” -
Michael Hardt, author of, The Subversive Seventies
In Brutalism, eminent social and critical theorist Achille Mbembe invokes the architectural aesthetic of brutalism to describe our moment, caught up in the pathos of demolition and production on a planetary scale.
DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Series: Theory in Form
January 2024 200pp
9781478025580 £21.99 PB
Critique of Black Reason
Achille Mbembe
Translated by Laurent Dubois
"[I]ncontrovertible reading on the complex dynamic between race and belonging in twenty-first century societies. Though global in reach, the work is primarily infused with insightful analysis and perspectives on the United States, South Africa, and France, spaces in which the historical legacies of slavery, apartheid, and colonialism remain of pertinence to this day, while also being locations in and from which, the author himself has gained particular familiarity as integral components of his intellectual journey and trajectory.... [B]rilliant and pioneering...." - Dominic Thomas, Europe Now
“
Critique of Black Reason is an illuminating and brilliant addition to Mbembe’s corpus. It is the kind of book, I suspect, that will become compulsory reading for undergraduate and graduate classes worldwide." - Manosa Nthunya, The African Independent
DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS
March 2017 240pp
9780822363439 £22.99 PB
Necropolitics
Achille Mbembe
"The appearance of Achille Mbembe's Necropolitics will change the terms of debate within the English-speaking world. Trenchant in his critique of racism and its relation to the precepts of liberal democracy, Mbembe continues where Foucault left off, tracking the lethal afterlife of sovereign power as it subjects whole populations to what Fanon called ‘the zone of non-being.’ Mbembe not only engages with biopolitics, the politics of enmity, and the state of exception; he also opens up the possibility of a global ethic, one that relies less on sovereign power than on the transnational resistance to the spread of the death-world." - Judith Butler
"[Mbembe's] latest and eminently readable offering . . . speaks to the spirit of our times with such clarity and profundity that it bears all the hallmarks of an instant classic of anti-racist literature." - Ashish Ghadiali, Red Pepper
DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Series: Theory in Form October 2019 224pp
9781478006510£22.99 PB
Achille Mbembe is the recipient of the 2024 Holberg Prize, presented by the University of Bergen on behalf of the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research.
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