Colonialism, liberalism, and the politics of enmity: some interpretations of Achille Mbembe

Abstract

This paper, the result of bibliographic, critical, and interpretative analysis, seeks to understand how philosopher Achille Mbembe incisively reveals the persistence of colonial structures of domination embedded at the core of Western liberalism and its politics of enmity. The aim is to investigate how the author highlights the invention of race, mobilized as a linguistic construct derived from bourgeois ideals – such as liberty and democracy – which, paradoxically, shaped oppressive realities that concealed and perpetuated economic, social, and political domination. In light of this, the objective is to understand how Mbembe’s analysis calls for a critical reassessment of these contradictions, emphasizing the urgent need to achieve a politics of life capable of reorganizing human relations based on a more global mode of thought and a greater openness to ethical recognition. The working hypothesis is that, for such a transformation to be possible, it is necessary to transcend the racist discourses constructed through normative legal declarations within the Western tradition, effectively confronting the colonial legacy and the contemporary practices of institutionalized exclusion and violence – thus rendering this approach not only political, but, above all, philosophical.