Achille Mbembe’s deliberate refusal to employ psychoanalysis to interpret Ruben Um Nyobe’s dream notebooks stems from his intellectual stance and methodological choices, which prioritize historical, political, and philosophical frameworks over Western psychoanalytic tools. Here’s how he consciously avoided a psychoanalytic reading while still deeply engaging with the significance of Um Nyobe’s dreams:
1. Refusal of Western Universality
Mbembe rejects the universal application of Western intellectual frameworks, such as psychoanalysis, to African contexts. Psychoanalysis, rooted in Freud and later expanded by figures like Lacan, emerges from a Western epistemological and cultural background that often assumes universality while failing to account for non-Western experiences.
Instead, Mbembe sought to situate Um Nyobe’s dreams within the specific historical, political, and cultural realities of colonial Cameroon, avoiding reductive interpretations that might universalize or pathologize his experiences.
2. Dreams as Political Acts, Not Subconscious Projections
Unlike psychoanalysis, which tends to view dreams as expressions of the individual unconscious, Mbembe approached Um Nyobe’s dreams as political texts - manifestations of his resistance to colonialism and his vision for a liberated Cameroon.
Mbembe emphasized the collective dimension of these dreams, seeing them not as individual fantasies or neuroses but as communal aspirations for sovereignty, dignity, and self-determination.
3. Rooting Interpretation in African Epistemologies
Mbembe deliberately anchored his analysis in African modes of thought, recognizing the importance of oral traditions, spirituality, and communal memory in understanding Um Nyobe’s dream notebooks.
By doing so, he framed dreams as part of a dialogue with ancestors, the land, and history rather than as intrapsychic symbols to be decoded through Freudian or Lacanian lenses.
4. Avoiding the Pathologization of Anti-Colonial Struggles
Psychoanalysis has historically been critiqued for its potential to pathologize political resistance, framing revolutionary leaders or freedom fighters as subjects driven by repressed desires or unresolved traumas.
Mbembe rejected this framing, treating Um Nyobe’s dreams as acts of ethical and intellectual resistance rather than as symptoms of a fractured psyche. This aligns with Mbembe’s broader critique of Western frameworks that reduce African agency to psychological or pathological terms.
5. Historical Materialism and Political Temporality
Mbembe focused on the historical and material conditions of Um Nyobe’s context: the violence of colonial occupation, the suppression of nationalist movements, and the longing for a postcolonial future.
He viewed the dreams as imaginative interventions into historical time, where Um Nyobe sought to reconfigure the temporal order imposed by colonialism. This emphasis on temporality and history bypassed the psychoanalytic focus on intrapsychic time.
6. Philosophical and Poetic Hermeneutics
Mbembe employed a philosophical and poetic approach to interpret the dreams, seeing them as expressions of existential yearning and the human condition under colonial domination. By focusing on the poetic dimensions of Um Nyobe’s notebooks, Mbembe highlighted their creative and transformative potential, steering away from psychoanalysis’s tendency to dissect and categorize.
He treated the dreams as living texts - open to multiple interpretations and deeply embedded in the shared struggles of African peoples.
7. Decolonial Refusal of Western Diagnostic Tools
For Mbembe, interpreting Um Nyobe’s dreams through psychoanalysis would risk reproducing the colonial logic of imposing Western epistemologies on African experiences. His refusal was an act of decolonial resistance, prioritizing African voices, contexts, and intellectual traditions over imported frameworks.
8. Reframing Trauma as Event
Instead of focusing on trauma as a psychoanalytic concept tied to individual pathology, Mbembe reinterpreted it as an event - collective rupture that opens possibilities for reimagining existence. He saw Um Nyobe’s dreams not as symptoms of trauma but as sites where trauma could be transformed into action and meaning.
This aligns with Mbembe’s broader philosophy of turning wounds into sites of Ereignis (event), where suffering becomes the ground for new beginnings.
Summary
Mbembe’s refusal to use psychoanalysis in interpreting Ruben Um Nyobe’s dream notebooks was an intentional and politically charged methodological choice. He avoided reducing the dreams to psychological phenomena, instead treating them as profound political, historical, and cultural texts. By anchoring his interpretation in African epistemologies and the lived realities of colonial oppression, Mbembe positioned Um Nyobe’s dreams as collective acts of resistance and imaginative reclamations of sovereignty, sidestepping the reductive and alien frameworks of Western psychoanalysis.
