Wits University professor, Achille Mbembe, named 2024 Holberg Prize Laureate
The Holberg Prize is one of the largest international prizes awarded annually to an outstanding researcher in the humanities, social sciences, law or theology.
A Cameroonian scholar, Achille Mbembe, is a research professor of history and politics at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER).
Mbembe is one of the most-read and cited scholars from the African continent and receives the prize for his pioneering research in African history, postcolonial studies, humanities, and social science over four decades. Both as an academic and as a public intellectual, he is known for his ability to bridge existing thinking on colonialism and decolonisation with pressing questions on topics such as contemporary migration regimes, global citizenship, restitution and reparation, technology, climate change and planetary futures.
As a historian and a political philosopher, he has been most concerned about the entanglement of Europe and its former colonies. Using Africa as a point of departure for a mode of thinking that is continuous with multiple and interlocking lineages, he has revealed the extent to which the continent is a living laboratory of thought forms and ideas, a vast world of invention, imagination and creativity.
Originally written in French, Mbembe’s books and numerous articles have been translated into 17 languages. His key books include On the Postcolony, Out of the Dark Night, Necropolitics, Brutalism and The Earthly Community: Reflections on the Last Utopia, as well as the Critique of Black Reason – a philosophical study of the meaning of Blackness as it historically emerged.
Describing the key purpose of his work, the Laureate asks, ‘What are the conditions for rethinking the world in a way that opens up alternative ways of inhabiting it, of being-in-common and of nurturing a planetary consciousness?’; ‘How to think an open future that moves beyond the history of race, colonialism and segregation with which the present is so deeply entangled?’
Mbembe said, “These questions have been at the heart of my research over the span of my career. Behind them lurks an even bigger issue, that of life futures – how can life be repaired, reproduced, sustained and cared for, made durable and universally shared?”
Holberg committee chair Heike Krieger explained, “Mbembe’s oeuvre goes beyond a particularised notion of decolonisation to a universalist recentring of the human. For him, this involves a dedication to facing historical truth, while learning and remembering across South-North divides.”
Vice-chancellor and principal of Wits University Professor Zeblon Vilakazi added, “Congratulations to Prof. Achille Mbembe, an outstanding scholar, historian, political philosopher, critical thinker and one of the world’s foremost intellectuals.
“This award serves as a testament to the distinguished contribution that Prof. Mbembe has made to contemporary scholarship, which will undoubtedly inspire generations of scholars in years to come.”
Mbembe will receive the award of Norwegian Krone 6m (about R10.7m) at the ceremony to be hosted at the University of Bergen, Norway, on June 6.
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