Magical Politics in Equatorial Africa
Florence Bernault
University of Wisconsin-Madison
[NB: this draft is a preliminary discussion
of issues that I will explore further in my talk]
At the twentieth century’s
end, religion and magic constitute one of the most powerful rhetorics of
political culture in Equatorial Africa.
Public rumors depict sorcery as the most common way to achieve personal
success, wealth, and prestige in times of economic shortage and declining social
opportunities. Political leaders are
widely believed to perform ritual murder to ensure electoral success and power,
and many skillfully use these perceptions to build visibility and deference. In the domestic arena, familial and social
conflicts repeatedly crystallize around accusations of sorcery, especially
during times of sudden deaths or personal disasters. Permeating the entire social and cultural spectrum, magic stands
today as a ambivalent force that helps promote individual and collective accumulation
as well as control social differentiation.
Yet, the magical dimension
of politics in Africa is oftentimes ignored by classic political and historical
studies. This preliminary discussion
argues first that the magical dimension of politics is not a marginal, but a
central dimension of the nature of public authority, leadership, and popular
identities in Equatorial Africa. How and why do religious beliefs take such a
central place in public life in Equatorial Africa ? Can the role of magic in public life explain the violent,
autocratic nature of post-colonial regimes in this region ? How does magic leadership mobilize followers
and provide ideological consensus? How
do political actors share magic resources for domestic and public
purposes?
Second, this paper calls for
a grounded, comparative, and historical exploration of the multiple religious
layers of political beliefs in contemporary Equatorial Africa. Only recently has a burgeoning
anthropological literature begun to pay attention to the unforeseen
proliferation of such practices and beliefs, and to their relocation in modern
settings (Comaroff & Comaroff, 1993; Geschiere, 1997). Anthropological accounts, however, do not
provide a clear elucidation of the long and elaborate transformations of
magical beliefs over the past century.
We have little sense of how Africans preserved their spiritual knowledge
in the face of colonial assaults, or how Christianity, bio-medicine, and
material culture influenced local ideologies and techniques.
Far from being destabilized
by colonial rule, sorcery benefited from the existence of colonial dramaturgies
of authority --monopoly, secrecy, bodily violence-- that fit local
representations of power. European obsessions
with witchcraft promoted it as a prominent ground for strategies of resistance
and innovation, thus recentering it at the core of political culture. Finally, these developments help re-evaluate
the colonial period as a moment of strategic cultural reconfigurations rather
than as a rupture characterized by the destruction of existing African
references and values. An in-depth,
grass-root history of magical politics will shed light on the broader issue of
cultural innovation in Central Africa.
My regional focus is Gabon
and Congo-Brazzaville, where administrative elites, leaders of political
factions, political activists, militants, militias and soldiers, as well as
civilian populations, have struggled for over 50 years --and are still
struggling today -- for influence, authority, and survival within the field of
the sacred. Gabon presents a good case
study for a number of historiographical and theoretical reasons: significant
urban, creolized communities had emerged on the coast since the eighteenth
century, yet the interior had a reputation for sheltering exceptionally
"primitive tribes" inclined to anthropophagy. These visions were matched by high colonial
anxieties over the fragility of white rule in this large, scarcely populated
colony. A cradle for small scale,
stateless societies prone to fission and migration, Gabon also sheltered a very
diverse set of local religions, including millenarist movements in the
twentieth century, and Bwiti, a modern, syncretic African church. In the Congo-Brazzaville, the recent
political developments introduced by the civil war since 1992, have shed light
on the ways in which magical politics are reconfigured in times of acute
crisis.
Politics
and Magic
The proliferation of political strategies pertaining to
the sphere of the sacred in the Congo-Brazzaville and Gabon have been
ubiquitous in public life since the “democratization waves” of the early 1990s,
the increasing competition for national power and visibility (Gabon), and, in
some places (Congo-Brazzaville) the fragmentation of national politics into
warring factions. During this period,
the increasing scarcity of financial resources, the collapse of world-wide
ideological and support networks (in particular the end of marxist-leninist
regime in the Congo-Brazzaville, and the decline of France’s financial and
political support of Gabon), have encouraged local struggles for power and the
recourse to innovative tactics of power accumulation.[1] These tactics include the manipulation of
local, sacred emblems borrowed from the ancient cosmologies of power (leopard
skins, minkisi: power charms and
spirits),[2]
witchcraft (rumors about ritual murders), recent cults developed during the
colonial period (Matswanism, Kimbanguism, Mademoiselle,
Ndjobi, Mami Wata, [3]
Christianity (such as Congolese leaders’ biblical nicknames: “Moses,” “Satan”),
modern life (militias named after transnational legends --Zoulous, or movie characters: Ninja),
and international, semi-religious networks (such as Masonic lodges).[4]
These tactics have intensified under the impact of
economic crisis and rampant war, and the dramatic fragilization of public
health and of national education. In
this context, political survival as well as political protection (clientelism) becomes, literally, a matter of life and
death. Manipulating supernatural powers
as a charismatic leader, or as a political militant, deriving magical
protection from allegiance to a powerful patron, allow individuals to seek life
options. These options, moreover, are
part of longstanding ideas about power.
In particular, ancient rituals of authority “charged” local chiefs and
ritual specialists (in Kikongo, mfumu
and nganga) with a power of life and
death over people. Political
regulation, therefore, is strongly connected to keeping a balance between the
benevolent and malevolent mystical capacities of the leader. In the context of contemporary wars in the
Congo, leaders are first and foremost warlords, deriving legitimacy from their
capacity to mobilize soldiers, provide a sense of community to their faction,
promote significant military and political success as well as relative security
and prosperity. In fact, even in
neighboring Gabon, a stable and comparatively rich country, the political game
functions, to some extent, as a form of war, thus encouraging the recourse to
magic.
Of course, such recourse,
instead of being a consequence of the political context of the time, can be
analyzed as the factor of warring politics and current crises. This ambiguity leads to important questions. Does the use of magic strengthen or
undermine leaders' ability to promote popular communities, and eventually the
emergence of a viable nation-state ?
Can the cosmology of power in Equatorial Africa coexist with the more
“modern,” democratic, and technical aspects of national and international
politics? What is the nature of the
articulation between the two ?
Recent studies on the
relationship between religion and politics in Africa have tried to answer these
questions, and have provided scholars with revised typologies and theoretical
models in sociology, anthropology, and political science.[5] Two major lines of argument have emerged
from this litterature: first, the
're-traditionalization' of Africa [6],
a theory arguing that contemporary political crises must be analyzed through
the recycling of older local beliefs and institutions (for instance, ethnicity
or ritual violence); and second, the "modernity" of African politics,
a common argument explaining recent politics as emerging from the constraints
of modernity" and "globalization", seen as entirely new contexts
and new dynamics. I argue on the
contrary that far from being a brutal resurgence of ancient, unchanged
superstitions, or recent inventions answering entirely new needs and new
functions, mystical reconfigurations have a long history in Equatorial
Africa. The reformulation of sacred
leadership in the twentieth century provides a good example of this.
During
the colonial period, nationalist élites accumulated both popular support and
official recognition from the colonial state, through the fusion of different
reservoirs of legitimacy.[7] Some works have paid close attention to the
magical aura and regalia of contemporary leaders.[8] Yet few have gone beyond the sense that
leaders merely indulge in backward, pathological popular superstitions,[9] betraying the failure of the modern state
and democratic system. The remarkable
endurance and vitality of these repertoires speaks not only to the centrality
of magic in the contemporary experience of power, but also to its capacity to
promote political dialogue between leaders and civil society, in particular by
addressing the problems posed by modernization, new identities, and economic
security.
Magic and ideas about
spiritual forces (understood in this region as both benevolent and malevolent,
able to heal or to destroy) do not derive mechanically from an old, unchanging
stock of ancient beliefs. Contemporary
leaders acquire popular influence partly because they creatively connect
different spheres of power. For
example, the former president of Congo-Brazzaville, Pascal Lissouba, was
nicknamed “le professeur” because of
his former career as a specialist of bio-genetics, and his strong connection
with academia and science. Yet his
political influence was also believed to be based on a powerful, recently
reconfigured local cult, Njobi. In addition, Lissouba’s partisan emblem
(three palm trees) sparkled popular rumors about his murdering of three
officers in the 1970s, reflecting a long standing belief in the ability of
“chiefs” (and other chiefly figures, such as Kongo charms, minkisi) to kill people.[10] Studies that stress the irrelevance, or
pathology, of the figure of the big man[11] in modern times also tend to obscure the
fact that modern leaders strive to strengthen legitimizing narratives about
their ascendance. Lissouba’s opponent
in the 1990s, Bernard Kolélas, made spiritual alliances with diverse categories
of political and religious actors in order to reinforce his triple “historical”
descendance from Matswa (messianic leader revered since the 1940s), from
ancient chiefs who had resisted the French in the 1880s (among his own ethnic
group, the Lari), and from the first president of the Congo-Brazzaville,
Fulbert Youlou, whose grave Kolélas kept as private and ethnic shrine. A significant feature of modern leaders,
therefore, is their ability to insert themselves into a historical continuum of
prominent political figures through legendary narratives of ascendancy.
The fact that leaders
display political charisma through a conscious, systematic accumulation of
markers from different sources (Christian tradition, local rituals, Western
material culture, universal science, transnational cults), thus fusing various
repertoires, illuminates the flexibility of local beliefs and their capacity to
articulate with modern and foreign elements.
Current studies of magical leadership have attempted to analyze this
modern construction of power through the metaphor of capital accumulation. The magic markers and capacities of leaders
can be described, according to such hypotheses, as political or cultural
capital, i.e. as material or
spiritual “things” that can be amassed.[12] This interpretation fits well with current
paradigms about the proliferation of warlords, predatory economies, and the
“criminalization” of the State.[13] However, in many Equatorial societies,
chiefs’ magical abilities and power are not comparable to material, or even
spiritual possessions. Chiefs, minkisi, or nganga (ritual specialists) the three indissociable figures of
power, are less owners of
supernatural powers (brought by spirits and ancestors), than interchangeable containers for such entities.[14]
Magical power is therefore
associated with physical fragility, a crucial dimension of politics today. For example, in July 1995, during a
relatively quiet episode of the ongoing civil war in the Congo-Brazzaville, the
tomb of the former president Fulbert Youlou was found opened and Youlou’s
remains visibly profaned. This
desecration was immediately interpreted as an attempt to undermine the sacred
authority of Bernard Kolélas, a leader of a fighting faction, and to destroy
the Pool region’s territorial integrity.
Corpses and bodies play an important part in the symbolic and spiritual
configuration of political territories.
To eliminate or weaken a rival, political leaders use spiritual and
physical mutilation, described in French by the verb “bomber” or “bombarder”
(to bomb, bombard, or shell).[15] This vocabulary betrays the importance of
the material location of political and spiritual power, whether in territories,
or in individual bodies. Just as the
districts of the capital of the Congo, Brazzaville, were bombed during the war
of 1992-97 as the realms of political power, bodies and corpses could be bombed
as shrines of power. Competing
political factions derive unity and strength from sacred sites as much as from
military forces and popular support.
Political or ethnic strongholds are oftentimes perceived as geographical
receptacles of supernatural and sacred forces.
However, the connection between sorcery, collective identities, and
sacred territories, is not synonymous with the confinement of politics into a
protected, stabilized physical space.
Each leader can attack the sanctuaries and vital force of his
enemies. Each stronghold can to some
extend be redrawn, incorporated or enlarged according to the political rapports de force.[16]
Shedding light on these
patterns can help us understand the dissemination of politics in Equatorial
Africa, particularly in time of crises.[17] Any ambitious leader can borrow from the
stock of existing emblems of sacred power, or invent new ones, while the public
dimension of power and healing power has been replaced by rituals of secrecy
and invisibility.[18] Political innovation, therefore, goes hand
in hand with an increasing criminalization of politics, both real and
metaphoric.[19]
Popular Culture and the
Magic Sphere
Such power configuration
presents dramatic analogies with earlier uses of sorcery in Equatorial Africa,
in particular when new forms of supernatural tactics emerged in the 20th
century as an innovative folklore shared by leaders and commoners, a common
field of dialogue informed by complex demands and needs.[20]
While sorcery was probably
used in ancient times both as a social equalizer and a legitimizing tool for
leadership, old notions of wealth and prestige altered during the slave trade
era. In accordance with the Equatorial
tradition, wealth and authority were based on the accumulation of people. The slave trade provided new economic
opportunities for acquiring dependents.
However, as the commoditization and destruction of people increased,
sorcery was perceived less as a instrument of social adjustment, and more as a
big men’s tool for destructive competition, attracting dependents against their
will, or capturing the spiritual and material vitality of their rivals. At the turn of the century, European rulers,
helped by Christian missionaries, directly attacked and partly destroyed old
beliefs, as well as the functions of religious leaders, traditional healers,
and ritual specialists. However, as
they monopolized the exercise of official authority, the Whites were perceived
as the holders of new spiritual forces, characterized by secrecy, violence, and
direct exploitation of Africans, hence involuntarily reinforcing local
ideologies that connected power with the exercise of supernatural, hidden, and
malevolent actions.
Early in the century,
Africans used sorcery and ordeals in order to solve the intense crises brought
by colonization.[21] Simultaneously, colonial authorities devoted
extraordinary energy to redefining the divide between the physical and the
invisible world, the sacred and the criminal, and "civilization" and
"savagery." They moved
quickly to dismantle what they considered criminal or backward practices,
banning such vital techniques as the making of shrines with ancestors’ skulls,
poison ordeals, the burial of the dead outside official cemeteries, and almost
all healing practices. In addition,
penal codes and colonial taxonomy imposed generic labels that obscured the
difference between right and wrong as defined by local religions. The term witchcraft (sorcellerie) was used to stigmatize all religious beliefs that
resisted the spread of Christianity.
However, colonial law simultaneously ignored such criminal acts that
resorted to the supernatural and remained, in European eyes, impossible to
prove by rational investigation (curses, mystical transmigration, infliction of
disease and evil), and strictly forbade Africans to punish alleged
witches. The codification and
criminalization of local beliefs struck at the core of African social and moral
orders.
Yet, through daily struggles
with death, disaster, and racial inequality, Africans strove to resist,
appropriate, and change the ideological system that Europeans sought to
impose. Hidden practices, borrowing to
colonial images of death and healing, strove and developed. Today, the circulation of ideas and
artifacts from worldwide networks (medias, circulation of commodities, printed
and visual culture, foreign religions), provide new resources for the popular
perceptions of politics. The
reconfiguration of repertoires of sacred power has never been confined to the
governing elites, rather, it has strategically connected popular culture and
magical leadership throughout the twentieth century.
These reformulations oftentimes took place within the arena of cannibalism, both a core aspect of sorcery in this region (to appropriate somebody’s vitality through sorcery is symbolically expressed as eating the victim) and a spectacular obsession among colonialists. In Gabon and Congo, where a number of rituals involve the use of body remains as relics, Europeans singled out these practices as the most offensive among African customs. As a consequence, cannibalism delineated a particularly heated site of knowledge, discourse, and practical struggles between Africans and Europeans.[22] Among Africans, cannibal stories had been equally widespread prior to colonization, serving in particular to define the boundaries between humanity and inhumanity, nature and culture. Moreover, since the sixteenth century, Africans had interpreted the demand for slaves as European acts of vampirism.[23] Starting in the 1880s, the colonial extraction of labor and taxes was stigmatized using a similar repertoire.[24] In the late twentieth century, popular perceptions of economic globalization, combined with an increasing circulation of goods and people, continued to borrow from these visions, feeding rumors of human labor exploitation by invisible zombies, or fears about commodities as hungry and malevolent fetishes.[25]
On the ground, magic
responses to economic globalization do not represent the sole aspect of the
connection between magic and modernity.
Magic is also a growing, international commodity. The importation and exportation of charms,
magical ingredients, and ritual specialists, has multiplied in Equatorial
Africa over the past ten years. In
Libreville, a thriving market of artifacts imported from West Africa, in
particular from Nigeria, sustains an expanding community of marabouts. These merchants-pharmacists not only monopolize the international
import business of artifacts from West Africa, they also serve as
intermediaries in the exporting business of collecting and selling animal skins
and skulls, wooden artifacts, healing or harmful powders, iboga (a hallucinatory plant used in the local Bwiti religion) from Gabon to customers in West Africa and Europe.
*
A micro-history of the
early, reciprocal impacts that took place in the colonies and postcolonies of
West Equatorial Africa and shaped modern ideas about power and the sacred,
challenges determinist views about African relations to the supernatural. I suggest that we should not envision such
relationship as permanent, unchanging ones,[26] nor analyze the twentieth century as a
moment of progressive fragmentation and impoverishment of ancient cosmologies
of power.[27] Modern African struggles over the sacred,
through intensified circulation of artifacts, ideas, and anxieties, have
persistently reconfigured and enriched local repertoires and strategies.
Moreover, the strategic
reconfigurations of magical politics that took place from the end of the
nineteenth century onwards question the originality and novelty of the
globalization of African cultures. My
research suggests that modern witchcraft cannot be analyzed only as a product
of recent modernity. The early patterns
of innovations and borrowing at the beginning of the twentieth century indicate
that such dynamics are both ancient and in constant flux. Rather than documenting how the societies
and leaders of Equatorial Africa react today to an undifferentiated
“modernity," we need to reflect upon what makes these dynamics specific
and original to this particular region and time, and to investigate the
changing connections people invent
between local, regional, national, and international ideas about magic and
politics.[28] In doing so, we will be able to shed fresh
light on the complex nature of the “moral matrix” of politics in this region,
and to provide new insights on the local history of power and knowledge
accumulation.[29]
Magical politics also
provide a new angle for studying the nature of modern ethnicity and social
identities in contemporary Equatorial Africa.
Although we have a wealth of studies on the political nature of modern ethnicity,[30]
we lack any in-depth study on the mystic perceptions of ethnic identities. As the unfolding of the current civil war
in Congo-Brazzaville has shown, ethnic identities are also constructed in
connection with the sphere of witchcraft and magic, and the crafting of
mystical narratives. In Equatorial
Africa, many ethnic identities are grounded in a violent political canvas where
militants and voters share legitimizing narratives in order to solidify,
however temporarily, fluid electoral bases into ideologically rigidified
communities.[31] We need to investigate this important,
although poorly understood dimension of contemporary ethnicity[32]
in order to understand current crises of governance, nation-building, and
ethnic hatred. The mystical aspect of
ethnicity also bears considerable significance for revising current ideas about
space, politics, and territoriality in this region.
[1] For recent case-studies, see M. Rowlands and J.-P. Warnier, “Sorcery, Power, and the Modern State in Cameroon”, Man, 23 (1988), pp. 118-32; H. West, “Creative Destruction and Sorcery of Construction : Power, Hope and Suspicion in Post War Mozambique," Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 20-1 (1997), pp. 13-31; D. Ciekawy, “Witchcraft in Statecraft: Five Technologies of Power in Coastal Kenya”, African Studies Review, 41-3 (1998), pp. 119-41; and H. Behrend & U. Luig, Spirit Possession. Modernity and Power in Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999).
[2] W. MacGaffey, Kongo Political Power. The Conceptual Challenge of the Particular (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), in particular pp. 78-96. For an excellent study of the endurance of local concepts of power in Angola, see L. Heywood, Contested Power in Angola, 1840s to the Present (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2000).
[3] On these cults, among many books, see M. Sinda, Le Messianisme congolais et ses incidences politiques (Paris: Plon, 1972), W. MacGaffey, Modern Kongo Prophets (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), H. Drewal, “Performing the Other: Mami Wata Worship in Africa,” The Drama Review, 32, 2 (1988), pp. 160-85. On Njobi, see G. Dupré, Un ordre et sa destruction (Paris: ORSTOM, 1982).
[4] M.-E. Gruénais, F. Mounda-Mbambi, and J. Tonda, “Messies, fétiches et luttes de pouvoir entre les ‘grands hommes’ du Congo démocratique”, Cahiers d’études africaines, 137, XXXV-1 (1995), pp. 163-94. Rémy Bazenguissa-Ganga, Les voies du politique au Congo. Essai de sociologie historique (Paris: Karthala, 1997).
[5] J.-F. Bayart, ed., Religion et modernité politique en Afrique noire (Paris: Karthala, 1993). For an excellent review essay, see S. Ellis & G. ter Haar, “Religion and Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Journal of Modern African Studies, 36-2 (1998), pp. 175-201.
[6] A theory supported by Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz in Africa Works. Disorder As Political Instrument (Oxford: James Currey, 1999). See especially Part II: "The 'Re-traditionalization' of Society", pp. 45-91.
[7] A. Mbembe, “Domaines de la nuit et autorité onirique dans les maquis du Sud-Cameroun (1955-1958),” Journal of African History, 31 (1990), pp. 89-121. F. Bernault, Démocraties ambiguës en Afrique centrale. Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville: 1940-1965 (Paris: Karthala, 1996), pp. 215-60.
[8] For Equatorial Africa, D. Bigo, Pouvoir et obéissance en Centrafrique (Paris: Karthala, 1988), pp. 163-72. M. Schatzberg, “Alternative Causalities and Theories of Politics: Explaining Political Life in the Congo (Zaire)," unpublished paper, presented at the 1997 Africa Conference “Research and Knowledge in Africa,” Rice University, 6-9 november 1997. For visual representations of Mobutu’s sacred regalia (leopard-skin cap, wooden scepter of authority), see Tshibumba Kanda Matulu’s paintings in J. Fabian, Remembering the Present. Painting and Popular History in Zaire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). More generally on African leaders and witchcraft, Y. Droz, “Si Dieu veut…ou les suppôts de Satan?,” Cahiers d’études africaines, XXXVII-1 (1997), pp. 85-117.
[9] See for example, B. Titley, Dark Age: The Political Odyssey of Emperor Bokassa (Montreal: McGill’s University Press, 1997), pp. 49-50. Among the most creative works revising these assumptions for Equatorial Africa, see M. Schatzberg, Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa: Father, Family, Food (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, forthcoming); Filip De Boeck, “Postcolonialism, Power and Identity: Local and Global Perspectives From Zaire," in R. Werbner & T. Ranger, eds., Postcolonial Identities in Africa (London: Zed books, 1996), pp. 75-106; and L. Heywood, “Understanding Modern Political Ideology among the Ovimbundu of Angola,” Journal of Modern African Studies, 36-1 (1998), pp. 139-67. For West Africa, see S. Ellis, The Mask of Anarchy. The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War (New York: New York University Press, 1999).
[10] Such capacity is the marker of the chiefs’ magical powers. MacGaffey, Kongo Political Culture, pp. 136-8.
[11] For the concept of the big man in pre-colonial history, see Jan Vansina, Paths in the Rainforest (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), pp. 73-4.
[12] On charismatic leadership, see M. Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), pp. 152-65. On power as capital, see J. Tonda, “Capital sorcier et travail de Dieu,” Politique africaine, 79 (2000), pp. 48-65. See also J.-F. Bayard, “The ‘Social Capital’ of the Felonious State,” in J.F. Bayart, S. Ellis, and B. Hibou, The Criminalization of the State in Africa (Oxford and Bloomington: James Currey & Indiana University Press, 1999), pp. 55-76.
[13] In addition to Bayart, The Criminalization (1997), see also W. Reno, Warlord Politics and African States (Boulder, London: Lynne Rienner, 1998).
[14] MacGaffey, Kongo Political Culture. See also J.-P. Warnier, “The King As A Container in the Cameroon Grassfields,” Paidema, 39 (1993), pp. 303-19.
[15] The term can describe an actual mutilation with a grenade, or mystical harm done to a victim. The term can be used as a metaphor for cutting vital parts of the enemy’s body (the genitals in particular) where the magic force resides. F. Bernault, “The Political Shaping of Sacred Locality in Brazzaville, 1959-97,” in D. Anderson and R. Rathbone, eds., Africa’s Urban Past (Oxford and Portsmouth: James Currey & Heinemann, 2000), pp. 283-302.
[16] In southern Congo, the political tradition relies in part upon the leaders’ continuity with their ascendants. In contrast, leaders of northern Congo have repeatedly seized power by annihilating or killing their predecessors. Most of their strength is associated with military and supernatural power. In many societies in Gabon, power and witchcraft are closely associated, yet leaders are chosen among remarkable individuals, not in a dynastic line.
[17] On a similar idea, for the case of Liberia, see Ellis, The Mask of Anarchy.
[18] On this idea, see S. Feierman, "Colonizers, Scholars, and the Creation of Invisible Histories," in V. E. Bonnell & L. Hunt, eds., Beyond the Cultural Turn (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), pp. 182-216.
[19] See urban rumors in Libreville (Gabon) about the kidnapping and dismembering of young children by power-hungry politicians. F. Bernault, “Struggles Over the Sacred: Magic and Power in Colonial and Postcolonial Gabon,” (article under review).
[20] By sorcery I mean concealed actions manipulated by people, willingly or unwillingly in contact with the supernatural reality, in order to acquire power over other people. Sorcery (ndoki in Kikongo) belongs to the sphere of the sacred, and activates the realm of the individual, the intimate, and the secret. At the same time, sorcery frames and codifies political action within the public realm.
[21] K. Fields, “Political Contingencies of Witchcraft in Colonial Central Africa: Culture and the State in Marxist Theory,” Canadian Journal of African Studies, 16-3 (1982), pp. 567-93; Vansina, Paths in the Rainforest, pp. 239-45; and A. Mbembe, La naissance du maquis dans le sud-Cameroun (Paris: Karthala, 1996).
[22] While literary analyses confined to the metropolitan sphere have thoroughly studied how Europeans used witchcraft and cannibalism to stigmatize, classify, and distance Africa, they have failed to provide a grounded study of how colonial rule used these visions to organize concrete attacks on African beliefs at the local level, nor on how Africans interpreted and participated in such grass-roots schemes. For example, see F. Lestringant, Le cannibale. Grandeur et décadence (Paris: Perrin, 1994).
[23] J. Miller, Way of Death. Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730-1830 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), pp. 4-5.
[24] L. White, Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
[25] D. Ciekawy & P. Geschiere, “Containing Wichcraft: Conflicting Scenarios in Postcolonial Africa,” African Studies Review, 41-3 (1998), pp. 1-14; B. Meyer, “ Commodities and the Power of Prayer: Pentecostalist Attitudes Towards Consumption in Contemporary Ghana,” in B. Meyer & P. Geschiere, eds., Globalization and Identity. Dialectics of Flow and Closure (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), pp. 151-76; and J. Comaroff & J. Comaroff, Modernity and its Malcontents. Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993).
[26] See F. Bernault & J.Tonda, “Dynamiques de l’invisible en Afrique,” Politique africaine, 79 (2000), pp. 5-16.
[27] MacGaffey, Kongo Political Culture, pp. 224-7.
[28] On long-term African appropriations of Christianity, for example, see B. Meyer, Translating the Devil. Religion and Modernity among the Ewe in Ghana (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1999); and J. Thornton, The Kongolese St Anthony. Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684-1706 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
[29] M. Schatzberg, “Power, Legitimacy and ‘Democratization’ in Africa,” Africa, 64-3 (1993), pp. 445-461. On the relations between power and knowledge in Equatorial Africa, see the seminal article by J. Guyer & S. M. Eno Belinga, “Wealth in People as Wealth in Knowledge: Accumulation and Composition in Equatorial Africa,” Journal of African History, 36 (1995), pp. 91-120, and recent developments in J. Guyer, “La tradition de l’invention en Afrique équatoriale,” Politique africaine, 79 (2000), pp. 101-39.
[30] C. Newbury, The Cohesion of Oppression in Rwanda: Clientship and Ethnicity in Rwanda, 1860-1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); M. Mamdani, Citizen and Subject. Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); and Bernault, Démocraties ambiguës.
[31] J. Tonda, “La guerre dans le 'Camp Nord' au Congo-Brazzaville: ethnicité et ethos de la consommation/consumation," Politique africaine, 72 (1998), pp. 50-67; and in R. Bazenguissa, “The Spread of Political Violence in Congo-Brazzaville”, African Affairs, 98 (1999), pp. 37-54.
[32] Among the few studies that address this issue, see L. Malkki, Purity and Exile. Violence, Memory and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995). Also Bernault, “The Political Shaping of Sacred Locality,” art. cit.