This narrative justifies the coloniser using violence and having power over the colonised. They have “a bundle of drives, but not of capacities” (pg 26). So the coloniser creates the narrative that the colonised have impulses, but not motivated reasoning. So, the coloniser needs to create an “imaginary” - some narrative about the colonised. “The colonized does not exist as a self the colonized is, but in the same way as a rock is-that is, as nothing more.” (pg187) But, people obviously are not actually objects, like rocks. He/she was a tool subordinated to the one who fashioned, and could now use and alter, him/her at will… They could be destroyed, as one may kill an animal, cut it up, cook it, and, if need be, eat it.” (pg 26-7) “the colonized could only be envisaged as the property and thing of power.

Mbembe says that the colonised belong to the “sphere of objects”: This makes the people who receive that violence objects because they have no grounds to oppose what they are subjected to - and violence justifies whatever harm or oppression they face from the coloniser. Violence erases any concept of “right” and “wrong”. Just opposing it makes the opposer in the “wrong”. There are also no moral grounds to oppose that violence. (pg26) Violence also erases any morality because the methods used to achieve any specific goal don’t matter if those methods can’t be questioned. Mbembe calls this concept “unconditionality” because there are no conditions for justice or for legitimacy. Violence, therefore, creates its own legitimacy. By following up earlier violence with future violence, there is no accountability for that earlier violence and there is no opportunity to question its legitimacy. This entire process creates a circular loop of violence. The third maintains colonisation, attempting to make it permanent. The second converts this violence to authority, creating systems that justify colonisation. Founding violence is used to create the space for colonisation. There are three motivations for colonial violence. This review focuses on the first four chapters and the introduction. These, Mbembe argues, have continued in postcolonies. This means Mbembe tries to understand our psychological and social responses to colonial violence. The book uses different types of analysis: economic, historical, philosophical and psychoanalytic. Over six chapters, with a seminal introduction, Mbembe shows us the role of violence in the postcolony and the complicated behaviours of people in postcolonial Africa. We learn a lot about postcolonial Africa from Achille Mbembe’s On the Postcolony (published in 2000).

Mbembe on the postcolony