Professor Pierre-Philippe
Collaborating Researcher, Philosophy and Genre Project
Pierre-Philippe Fraiture is Professor of French in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom, and a collaborator on the ERC-funded project Philosophy and Genre: Creating a Textual Basis for African Philosophy. His research explores French colonial and postcolonial discourses from the nineteenth century to the present, with particular attention to the intellectual transitions from empire to post-empire.
His work lies at the crossroads of literary criticism, anthropology, African art, and African philosophy, and he has published widely on Congolese philosopher Valentin Yves Mudimbe. Author of four monographs and several (co-)edited volumes, he examines how culture, literature, and visual art engage with imperialism and its afterlives in France, Belgium, and their former colonies in sub-Saharan Africa, especially the Democratic Republic of Congo. Within the Philosophy and Genre project, he contributes expertise on Francophone African intellectual and artistic traditions, colonial history, and the intersections of philosophy and genre.
≣ Publications
≣ Book Chapters
≣ Thinking, Performing, and Overcoming Belgium’s ‘Colonial Power Matrix’?: An Introduction
Author(s): Pierre-Philippe Fraiture
Published in: In Unfinished Histories: Empire and Postcolonial Resonance in Central Africa and Belgium, pp. 11–40, 2022
Publisher: Leuven University Press
DOI: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv31djqxw.4
→ https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv31djqxw.4
Abstract: Introduces the volume’s interdisciplinary approach to Belgian imperial afterlives across DR Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. Conceptualizes a “colonial power matrix” spanning culture, heritage, law and memory, and previews chapters that interrogate museums, literature, arts and urban space to illuminate postcolonial resonances today.
≣ Tracking the Potholes of Colonial History: Sinzo Aanza’s Généalogie d’une banalité and Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s Tram 83
Author(s): Pierre-Philippe Fraiture
Published in: In Unfinished Histories: Empire and Postcolonial Resonance in Central Africa and Belgium, pp. 359–380, 2022
Publisher: Leuven University Press
DOI: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv31djqxw.20
→ https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv31djqxw.20
Abstract: Reads contemporary Congolese works to expose ruptures, absences and uneven surfaces left by colonial extraction. Shows how narrative form and urban imaginaries confront lingering infrastructures of exploitation, proposing literary “potholes” as a method to sense, historicize and critique colonial continuities.
≣ Monograph
≣ Unfinished Histories: Empire and Postcolonial Resonance in Central Africa and Belgium
Author(s): Pierre-Philippe Fraiture, Chantal Gishoma & Albert Kasanda (eds.)
Published in: Leuven University Press, 2022. ISBN 978-94-6166-492-1
Publisher: Leuven University Press
DOI: —
→ https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv31djqxw
Abstract: Interrogates how Belgian imperialism continues to shape memory, institutions and everyday life in Belgium, DR Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. Through literature, museums, law, media, architecture and the arts, contributors connect colonial archives to present resonances, mapping decolonial practices and ethical responses across regions and disciplines.