Afrocomputation
- By Achille Mbembe,
- Interview with Bregtje van der Haak
Pages 198 to 204
Cite this article
- MBEMBE, Achille,
- Interview with VAN DER HAAK, Bregtje,
- Mbembe, Achille.,
- et al.
- Mbembe, A.,
- Interview with Van der Haak, B.
https://doi.org/10.3917/mult.069.0198
Cite this article
- Mbembe, A.,
- Interview with Van der Haak, B.
- Mbembe, Achille.,
- et al.
- MBEMBE, Achille,
- Interview with VAN DER HAAK, Bregtje,
https://doi.org/10.3917/mult.069.0198
The explosion of uses of communication techniques throughout Africa has roots that go deep into the pre-colonial imaginary, which extended its world beyond the perceptible, the corporeal, the conscious. In this cosmogony, technical objects and artefacts were endowed with a vitality generating interfaces, thresholds to transgress in order to reach the universe’s infinite horizons. Smartphones and the Internet speak to this archaic unconscious as well as to the technical memories of African societies, allowing them to move without transition from the stone age to the digital age. Africa was digital before the digital age, as African societies were constituted by circulation and movement, written in the myths of origins. Migration means a readiness to experience novelty, permanent plasticity, extension of the possible. This subtle aptitude constantly to innovate also animates the spirit of the Internet and of the digital.