In:
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, Cambridge University Press (CUP), Vol. 53, No. 6 ( 1998-12), p. 1251-1279
Abstract:
Since 1980, State courts in the East Province of Cameroon began to convict “witches ”, mostly on the basis of the testimonies of “witch-doctors ”, whose “expertise” thus receives official recognition. Such direct interventions by the State in witchcraft affairs are not exceptional in post-colonial Africa; they reflect a general obsession with a supposed proliferation of “witchcraft”. Striking is that “witchcraft” becomes an overriding issue precisely in the more modem sectors of society. A comparison with historical studies of witchcraft trials in early Modem Europe is of interest because in these studies as well the relation between “witchcraft” and “modernity” is a central, albeit highly differently interpreted, issue. Of special relevance is Michel de Certeau's insistence that the witches, as much as the magistrates who convict them, are part and parcel of the modem changes. In Africa as well, witchcraft is not to be studied as a relict of a tradition that will disappear with “modernization”. It is rather modernity itself its dreams and practices, that seems to reproduce the witchcraft imaginary on an unprecedented scale. Witchcraft trials offer a concrete setting to locate the intermediaries that play a key role in this. The African examples, like the Italian “micro-historians”, emphasize the role of seemingly subaltern actors in the crystallization of the modem changes: the nganga (witch-doctors) — more than the State and its representatives —figure as key actors in this modem reproduction of witchcraft discourses.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
0395-2649
,
1953-8146
DOI:
10.3406/ahess.1998.279724
Language:
English
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Publication Date:
1998
detail.hit.zdb_id:
298-7
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2209294-8
SSG:
8,2
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