Joseph Tonda – författare

The “Modern Sovereign,” a notion indebted both to Hobbes’s Leviathan and Marx’s conception of capital, refers to the power that governed the African multitudes from the earliest colonial days to the post-colonial era. It is an internalized power, responsible for the multiform violence exerted on bodies and imaginations. Joseph Tonda contends that in Central Africa—and particularly in Gabon and the Congo—the body is at the heart of political, religious, sexual, economic, and ritual power. This, he argues, is confirmed by the strong link between corporeal and political matters, and by the ostentatious display of bodies in African life. The body of power asserts itself as both matter and spirit, and it incorporates the seductive force of money, commodities, sex, and knowledge. Tonda’s incisive analysis reveals how this sovereign power is a social relation, historically constituted by the violence of the African cultural Imaginary and the realities of State, Market, and Church. It is to be understood, he asserts, through a generalized theory economic, political, and religious fetishism. By introducing this crucial critical voice from contemporary Africa into the English language, The Modern Sovereign makes a significant contribution to field of anthropology, political science, and African studies.

Postcolonial Imperialism considers the inability to distinguish between reality and fiction as a key condition of contemporary life. If postcolonial theory has highlighted how white colonizers created images of racialized Others which project their own self-hatred or disavowal, Joseph Tonda here shows how these images have in turn colonized Western imaginaries. He argues that the Global North’s obsession with its own phantoms takes a newly powerful form in the dazzling images of postcolonial screens. With examples ranging from Nicki Minaj to Osama Bin Laden and child soldier Johnny Mad Dog, Tonda reflects on power by analyzing the dazzlements of both Central Africa and the West, showing how African life prefigures Western experiences. Translated from its original French, Postcolonial Imperialism is a prescient critique of authoritarian attempts to enforce alternate realities, and of the many ways screens can distort our vision.

Postcolonial Imperialism considers the inability to distinguish between reality and fiction as a key condition of contemporary life. If postcolonial theory has highlighted how white colonizers created images of racialized Others which project their own self-hatred or disavowal, Joseph Tonda here shows how these images have in turn colonized Western imaginaries. He argues that the Global North’s obsession with its own phantoms takes a newly powerful form in the dazzling images of postcolonial screens. With examples ranging from Nicki Minaj to Osama Bin Laden and child soldier Johnny Mad Dog, Tonda reflects on power by analyzing the dazzlements of both Central Africa and the West, showing how African life prefigures Western experiences. Translated from its original French, Postcolonial Imperialism is a prescient critique of authoritarian attempts to enforce alternate realities, and of the many ways screens can distort our vision.

L’impérialisme postcolonial n’est pas l’impérialisme qui viendrait après la colonisation. Il est l’impérialisme noir, l’impérialisme invisible, de la Race ou de la Bête, c’est-à-dire de la valeur et de la libido, de l’Argent et du Sexe. Il est le point aveugle que partagent la théorie postcoloniale et ses contempteurs. Le spectre du Noir colonise l’imaginaire du Blanc. Mais, plus encore, le colonial est colonisé par le colonisé lui-même, son opposé qui est aussi sa création, et qui le mine de l’intérieur.Avec rigueur et truculence, Joseph Tonda, l’un des penseurs les plus originaux du continent, poursuit sa réflexion sur le pouvoir en analysant les éblouissements de l’Afrique centrale comme de l’Occident. Prises dans une même destinée, nos sociétés sont chahutées entre enchantements et violences, entre calculs et folie, entre croyance et consommation, dans l’indiscernabilité du réel et de l’irréel, du passé et du présent, c’est-à-dire dans l’imaginaire. En faisant défiler sous nos yeux, eux aussi éblouis, les images-écrans, les images d’images de la mondialisation néolibérale qui ont saisi toutes les sociétés, il nous prouve une nouvelle fois qu’il n’est pas si facile de « tuer les yeux », en tout cas les siens.Joseph Tonda est professeur de sociologie à l’Université Omar Bongo de Libreville. Il a publié, chez Karthala, La guérison divine en Afrique centrale (2002) et Le souverain moderne. Le corps du pouvoir en Afrique centrale (2005). Il est aussi l’auteur de romans, dont Chiens de foudre (Éditions ODEM, 2013) et Tuée-tuée mon amour (Éditions CLE Yaounde, 2015).