State and Culture in Postcolonial Africa

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Africa

Medina Gounass: Constructing Extra-National Space in a West African Borderland

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
David Newman Glovsky
Keyword(s):  
Islamic Law ◽  
West African ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
National Space ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
History Of ◽  
Postcolonial Africa ◽  
Postcolonial States ◽  
The Town

Abstract The historical autonomy of the religious community of Medina Gounass in Senegal represents an alternative geographic territory to that of colonial and postcolonial states. The borderland location of Medina Gounass allowed the town to detach itself from colonial and independent Senegal, creating parallel governmental structures and imposing a particular interpretation of Islamic law. While in certain facets this autonomy was limited, the community was able to distance itself through immigration, cross-border religious ties, and smuggling. Glovsky’s analysis of the history of Medina Gounass offers a case study for the multiplicity of geographical and territorial entities in colonial and postcolonial Africa.

Violence and ‘othering’ in colonial and postcolonial Africa. Case study: Banda's Malaŵi

2006 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Jones ◽  
Domoka Lucinda Manda
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Africa

scholarly journals Charting African Prosperity Gospel economies

2016 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Heuser
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Structural Parameters ◽  
Business Management ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Prosperity Gospel ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Pentecostal Theology ◽  
Vital Debate ◽  
Postcolonial Africa

This article maps the vital debate on Prosperity Gospel in Africa and its relevance for socioeconomic change. Prosperity Gospel centres mainly on speech acts surrounding faith, wealth and victory, combined with ritual enactments around secondary evidences of divine blessings. Claiming this-worldly success and material well-being as signs of grace it has captured public spheres and has created African religio-scapes of prosperity. The survey on the socioeconomics of African prosperity-oriented Pentecostalism firstly traces the historic genealogy of Prosperity Gospel as transposable message. It appears as a generic formula in paradigmatic reinventions of Pentecostalism in post-second and/or cold war America and in its globalisation in postcolonial Africa. The double resignification of Pentecostal theology - a rereading of ‘mammon’ alongside a new ethic of being in the world - relates to the question of socioeconomic agency. Academic discourse connects Prosperity Gospel social capital with interpretations of its ritual texture thriving around rituals of tithings and offerings. Prosperity Gospel economies are profiled as forms of sacral consumption or sacrificial economy, or else as Pentecostal kleptocracy. Contrarily Prosperity Gospel is portrayed as a variant and porter of African social change. The contextualisation of Prosperity Gospel highlights diverse social agency in different milieus. Rural and peri-urban theologies of survival differ from urban progressive and metropolitan business management Prosperity Gospel. The findings defy generalised views on Prosperity Gospel socioeconomics. African Prosperity Gospel indicates a transformative potential in immediate social relationships, whereas claims of impacting structural parameters of society remain, with a few exceptions, part of Pentecostal imagination.

scholarly journals Anusocratie? Freemasonry, sexual transgression and illicit enrichment in postcolonial Africa

Africa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 90 (5) ◽  
pp. 831-851
Author(s):  
Peter Geschiere ◽  
Rogers Orock
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Sexual Diversity ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
Sexual Transgression ◽  
Postcolonial Africa ◽  
Anal Penetration ◽  
Sex Practices

AbstractCameroonians recently invented a new word to characterize the state of their country: anusocratie (the rule of the anus). This became central in the moral panic from 2000 onwards over a supposed proliferation of homosexuality. Anusocratie links such same-sex practices to illicit enrichment by the national elites and their involvement with secret associations of Western provenance, such as Freemasonry, Rosicrucians and the Illuminati. This article tries to unravel this conceptual knot of homosexuality, the occult (Freemasonry) and illicit enrichment: first, by historicizing it. Of interest in the Cameroonian case is the fact that a similar link is mentioned in one of the first ethnographies, Günther Tessmann's Die Pangwe. Freemasonry is clearly a colonial imposition on the country, but the link between same-sex practices and enrichment has a longer history. Second, a comparison with similar ideas elsewhere on the continent can also open up wider perspectives. The link with illicit enrichment does not figure in classical conceptions of ‘homosexuality’ as developed in Europe, yet it strongly emerges from examples from all over Africa. Both Achille Mbembe and Joseph Tonda show that this image of the anus – anal penetration – articulates popular concerns about staggering inequalities. Yet, this aspect is ignored in debates about growing ‘homophobia’ in Africa. A confrontation with classical texts from Western queer theory (Bersani, Mieli) can help us discover other layers in African discourses, notably an emphasis on sexual diversity as an answer to homophobia. It can also serve to relativize the linking of sexual practices to sexual identities, which is still seen as self-evident in much queer theory of Western provenance.

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