Essai

Witchcraft, Subjectivation and Sovereignty

Foucault in Cameroon

Laura Hengehold

What does the status of the occult in contemporary African politics have to tell us about the processes of subjectivation and sovereignty described in Foucault’s genealogy of Western biopolitics? Ideas about the invisible that have become strikingly popular in African societies undergoing rapid economic transformation may allow African philosophers and anthropologists to situate European forms of subjectivation, sovereignty, knowledge, and visibility with respect to their own “invisible” or occult dimension. My goal is arrive at a better understanding of what...