Debating Witchcraft in Africa: The Magritte Effect

Book excerpt: Given the circularity of the witchcraft complex in Africa, given its performative potential, isnt the flood of anthropological publications on the topic counter-productive insofar as it feeds what it pretends to analyse, and even stigmatize? Wouldnt the social scientists be well advised not to emulate the media and the Evangelical preachers and to avoid bestowing on Africa the dubious privilege of being no more than a shadow theatre devoid of substance on the stage of which everything power, work, production, economy, the family would actually be played in the occult? In this publication, eight scholars namely: Jean-Pierre Warnier, Didier Pclard, Julien Bonhomme, Patrice Yengo, Jane Guyer, Joseph Tonda, Francis Nyamnjoh and Peter Geschiere engage in a lively and contradictory debate on witchcraft/sorcery in Africa in a controversial historical context.