Bernault / Henriet / Kalema | Textures of Power | Buch | 978-94-6270-459-6 | www.sack.de

Buch, Englisch, 574 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 795 g

Bernault / Henriet / Kalema

Textures of Power

Central Africa in the Long Twentieth Century
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-94-6270-459-6
Verlag: Leuven University Press

Central Africa in the Long Twentieth Century

Buch, Englisch, 574 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 795 g

ISBN: 978-94-6270-459-6
Verlag: Leuven University Press


A multidisciplinary study of power in Central Africa.

Central Africa has long been a fertile ground for engendering new concepts and innovative research, exerting significant influence on African studies and beyond. This edited volume offers groundbreaking, multidisciplinary reflections on power in Central Africa, from the Atlantic slave trade era to the present. By bringing together emerging and leading scholars, Textures of Power builds on the rich epistemic legacies of (Central) African studies, and opens new research avenues across history, anthropology, and cultural and political studies. It offers fresh perspectives on colonial and postcolonial power structures, drawing on new findings while critically engaging with earlier theoretical frameworks.

Employing the concept of “texture” as a red thread, the book showcases the central importance of power as an analytical tool in the humanities and the social sciences. It fosters dialogues between emotions and technology, colonialism and its aftermath, and between non-humans and the invisible world. Drawing on stories about women, social rebellions, digital technologies, slavery, languages, forest management, charms, care and bio-medicine, urban life, radio, music, witchcraft, homosexuality, and environmental pollution, this volume emphasizes bottom-up, long-term and emic approaches as well as local theories about power.

This work will appeal to students and scholars in African studies, colonial and postcolonial studies, and those interested in Africa’s longue durée history. Beyond its spatial focus, it will also be relevant to those studying power dynamics, cultural studies, queer and gender studies, and environmental humanities.

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Weitere Infos & Material


Acknowledgements

A Note on the Book’s Cover: Thornton Dial’s ‘History Refused to Die’ (2004)

Introduction

Florence Bernault, Benoît Henriet, Emery Kalema

Part 1. Long-Term Imaginations and Languages of Power

Chapter 1.1. The Power of Motherhood and Wealth: Ugandan Concepts in the Common Era

Rhiannon Stephens

Chapter 1.2. From Hauling to Harrowing: Resilience and Change in Moral Imaginations of ‘Slavery’ in the Southern Lower Congo (700 BCE – ca. 1880s)

Marcos Leitão de Almeida

Chapter 1.3. The Powers of Objects and the Collapse of Lunda (Angola and Western DRC), 1850-1900

David M. Gordon

Chapter 1.4. The Power of Between: Political Power of the Bangando Community, Southeastern Cameroon

Stephanie Rupp, Philippe Ambata, Stephane Molong, Abel Mungoie

Part 2. Weaving and Tearing out Textures of Power in Colonial and Postcolonial Times

Chapter 2.1. A Transgressive Economy: Revolt, Repurposing, and Redistribution in 1931 Belgian Congo

Benoît Henriet

Chapter 2.2. ‘Strange Men Who Call Themselves Chiefs’: The Practice of Power and Authority Among the Acholi of Northern Uganda

Patrick Otim

Chapter 2.3. The Tension From Within: Soldiers and Administrators Disputing Power in Late Colonial Guinea-Bissau (1961-74)

Pedro Cerdeira

Chapter 2.4. Governing the Living Through the Dead: Necropower in a Post-Disaster Context in Cameroon

Brice Molo

Chapter 2.5. The Out-of-Self Sovereignty of the Dark Continent

Joseph Tonda

Part 3. Spatial Technologies

Chapter 3.1. More Than Meets the Eye: Colonial Violence and Spatial Imaginaries of Power in South-Ubangi, DR Congo

Margot Luyckfasseel

Chapter 3.2. Policing the Colonial City: Urban Planning and the Politics of Order in the Port City of Matadi, DR Congo, 1928-1960

Johan Lagae, Jacob Sabakinu Kivilu (†)

Chapter 3.3. Building Walls, Arranging Rooms: Values and Designs in Prisons of the Belgian Congo, 1908-1960

Valentine Dewulf

Chapter 3.4. Textures of Power in Kinshasa Prison: Regulation by Violence and Mafia-Style Arbitrariness

Sylvie Ayimpam, Jacky Bouju, Michel Bisa Kibul

Part 4. Gender, Sexualities, and Bodily Politics

Chapter 4.1. Engendering Domestic Space: Polygamy, Witchcraft, and Power Dynamic in the Mandara Mountains

Melchisedek Chetima

Chapter 4.2. The Language of Syphilis in Colonial Uganda

Neil Kodesh

Chapter 4.3. Homosexuality, Queer Politics, and the Texture of Power in Cameroon

Basile Ndjio

Chapter 4.4. Congolese Regimes and Lumumba’s Politics of Life

Emery Kalema

Part 5. The Other Side: Mystical and Nocturnal Power

Chapter 5.1. Witchcraft as an Archive: Aquatic Murders, Metamorphosis Forces, and Historical Narratives in the Central African Republic

Andrea Ceriana Mayneri

Chapter 5.2. When ‘Slaves’ are Kept in a Bundle: Reliquary Art, Power and Slavery in Southwestern Gabon and the Republic of Congo

Maxime de Formanoir

Chapter 5.3. Dark Capital and the Power of Containers

Florence Bernault

Chapter 5.4. Beyond Syncretism: The History of Tangled Powers in Congo- Brazzaville

Fred O. Biyela

Chapter 5.5. The Fabric of Conspiracy Narratives: Freemasonry as Anusocratie, Cameroon

Rogers Orock, Peter Geschiere

Part 6. Connectivities of Power

Chapter 6.1. The Musical Afterlives of the Kongo Kingdom: Music and Power Between Cuba and Central Africa in the Twentieth Century

Charlotte Grabli

Chapter 6.2. ‘Changwe Yetu’: Theatre as a Site of Encounters of Power on the Congolese Copperbelt

Enid Guene

Chapter 6.3. Radio and Dictatorship in Idi Amin’s Uganda

Derek R. Peterson

Chapter 6.4. The Timbre of Power in Burundi

Aidan Russell

Chapter 6.5. Music Technologies of Power in Gabon

Alice Aterianus-Owanga

Chapter 6.6. Digital Horizons, Cryptopolitical Agency, and Shifting Elsewheres in the Kinois Imagination in the Early Twenty-First Century

Katrien Pype

Part 7. Beyond the Human

Chapter 7.1. Weaving the Future: Duiker Hides Trade and the Aka in Colonial Central Africa

Etienne Gontard

Chapter 7.2. The Power of Pollution on the Central African Copperbelt

Iva Peša

Bibliography

List of contributors

Index


Henriet, Benoît
Benoît Henriet is Associate Professor of History at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

Lagae, Johan
Johan Lagae is Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning at Ghent University.

Pype, Katrien
Katrien Pype is an anthropologist whose research explores Kinshasa's popular culture, media, and digital worlds.

Bernault, Florence
Florence Bernault is Professor of African History at Sciences Po, Paris.

Kalema, Emery
Emery Kalema is Assistant Professor of History at The Africa Institute in Sharjah.

Luyckfasseel, Margot
Margot Luyckfasseel is Junior Research Professor in Modern African History at the University of Antwerp.



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