The idea of colonial industry in Jean Godefroy Bidima and the critique of Fabien Eboussi Boulaga

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that the concept of culture industry developed by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno had a decisive influence on Jean Godefroy Bidima’s critique of black African modernity. Drawing on some of his writings, I seek to demonstrate how Bidima’s philosophical endeavor inherits the concept of culture industry and applies it to the modern context of black Africa, where it is transformed into the concept of colonial industry. In both cases, the same critical perspective is at play, namely to formulate a broad critique of how cultural products (artworks in Horkheimer and Adorno, and philosophy in Bidima) are deprived of their substance in order to align with the mystification of the masses. The critique of the culture industry, which serves in Adorno as a fundamental critique of the production of modern art and its decadence into mass production, serves, revisited in Bidima, as a critique of modern black African philosophical discourse. With the light provided by this connection, I propose a rereading of Bidima’s critique of Fabien Eboussi Boulaga, the latter being presented as a promoter of a “discourse of mastery” in black African modern philosophy.