The concept of cultural conversion, understood in terms of its multifaceted intellectual significance but also in its concrete manifestations, lies at the heart of Valentin Yves (or Vumbi Yoka) Mudimbe's oeuvre. Whether as a novelist, a poet, or an essayist (see Coulon, 2003), Mudimbe has dedicated a major part of his creative energy to tracing the emergence of Western modernity in sub-Saharan Africa and to the factors, epistemological and otherwise, responsible for the gradual transformation of the Congo where he was born on 8 December 1941 (in Jadotville, which became Likasi after independence). His critical reflection, conducted in French and in English, is marked by a distinctive penchant for erudition and intertextual resonances. This intellectual brilliance – and ‘libido sciendi’ (Mouralis, 1988: 9) – is informed and enriched by Mudimbe's own biographical trajectory, first as a so-called évolué in the former Belgian Congo, then as a Benedictine monk in Rwanda (1959–61) and, finally, as an acclaimed creative writer and scholar at Louvain, Nanterre, Lubumbashi and, since 1980, in the United States (where he has held professorial positions at Duke University and Stanford University) and Latin America.

These experiences, and the various locations or institutional frameworks in which they have taken place, have understandably fashioned Mudimbe's thought, style of writing, intellectual allegiances and ideological positions. Mudimbe is an unorthodox thinker. In the same way as Edward Said or Abdelkébir Khatibi (see Chapter 8 of this volume), his production sits at the crossroads of various disciplines: African philosophy, critical theory, historiography, anthropology (and its critique) and the social sciences.