Achille Mbembe and Felwine Sarr, eds. The Politics of Time: Imagining African Becomings. Polity Press. 2023. 308 pp. $28.95. ISBN: 9781509551101.

The Politics of Time, constitutes a rigorous and intellectually ambitious interrogation of Africa's relationship with temporality, history, and futurity.By convening a constellation of critical voices from across the continent, the editors disrupt conventional, often Eurocentric, narratives that position Africa as existing "behind" or "outside" of history.Rather than accepting this static framing, the volume advances a conception of Africa as an active, generative space that continuously negotiates and redefines its temporal and historical position.In doing so, The Politics of Time resituates the continent within global intellectual discourse, portraying it as both an agent and architect of its own temporal imagination.The organization of the volume reflects this intellectual ambition.Rather than adhering to a single, linear narrative, the collection adopts a deliberately nonlinear structure that mirrors the complexity and heterogeneity of African temporal experiences.The various contributions, drawn from disciplines such as philosophy, history, art, and sociology, are interwoven to form a textured and polyphonic dialogue on time and being.Through this interdisciplinary engagement, the volume challenges reductionist representations of Africa as a uniform cultural or historical entity.Instead, it foregrounds the continent's multiplicity -its diverse rhythms, epistemologies, and modalities of existence.This multiplicity, as the editors suggest, constitutes not a deficiency but a strength: it enables the articulation of an African modernity that is at once internally grounded and outwardly dynamic.In his contribution, "From Imagining Identity to Thinking African Becomings," philosopher Suleimane Bachir Diagne offers one of the collection's most compelling theoretical interventions.Diagne advocates for a decisive epistemological shift in African thought-from reactive "identity politics," which defines Africanness primarily in opposition to colonial or Western frameworks, to a proactive orientation of "becoming."This conceptual reorientation emphasizes creative possibility, openness, and relationality, positioning African thought not as a counterpoint to the West but as a productive site of philosophical innovation in its own right.Diagne's argument invites readers to reconsider Africa's temporal positioning: rather than being defined by its past traumas, Africa is envisioned as a space of continual emergence and self-fashioning.In this sense, the essay exemplifies the volume's broader project of reimagining Africa's temporal and intellectual agency.