The particularly fierce explosion of homophobia in Cameroon since 2005 has to be understood in relation to popular beliefs that the national elite is deeply involved with Freemasonry which entices them to impose anal penetration on young men eager to find a job. This entanglement raises issues of wider relevance: the special trajectories of notions of ‘homosexuality’ in African contexts; and the even wider question whether historicizing such conspiracy narratives can help to relativize the visceral force they can acquire in certain contexts. 

Peter Geschiere is emeritus professor for the Anthropology of Africa at both the University of Amsterdam and Leiden University; he is also co-editor of ETHNOGRAPHY (SAGE). Since 1971 he has undertaken historical-anthropological fieldwork in various parts of Cameroon and elsewhere in West and Central Africa. His publications include The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Post-colonial Africa (Univ. Of Virginia Press, 1997), Perils of Belonging: Autochthony, Citizenship and Exclusion in Africa and Europe (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2009),  Witchcraft, Intimacy and Trust: Africa in Comparison (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2013) and (with Rogers Orock) ‘Anusocratie? Freemasonry, sexual transgression and illicit enrichment in postcolonial Africa, Africa 90(5), 2020:831-51  

La chaire Yves Oltramare Religion et politique dans le monde contemporain a pour mission d’apporter une contribution scientifique majeure à l’analyse de l’impact des rapports entre religion et politique sur l’évolution des sociétés et du système international.