Paper short abstract:

The study examines facial scarification and tattooing, still present among the Mbororo people from Cameroon. The settling process around big cities have brought its disappearance. Understanding the link between these disappearing body practices and ethnicity performances is the aim of my analysis.

Paper long abstract:

Among the Mbororo people in Cameroon, body practices such as facial tattoos and scarifications are well-known, although nowadays they are considered atavistic practices of unknown origin by the population, even for those who have them. The ethnographic analysis I've carried out identifies a certain relationship between this categorization and the label "Mbororo" as non-advanced/primitive people. So, in the paper I discuss if facial tattoos and scarifications are a materialized stigma for those Mbororo who, in fact, live in vulnerable living conditions, because of socio-political discrimination, which is also related to transhumance -their pastoral way of life (representative of the Fulani transnational ethnic group to which the Mbororo belong).

However, it is interesting to point out that a discourse about Mbororo ethnic identity, in terms of citizenship and "indigenous" distinctiveness, is increasing around urban areas and among some Mbororo NGOs and other associations. My research tries to assess whether a gap between the "image" and the "practice" of the corporal expression of being Mbororo actually exists, taking into account body management as a means of reconstructing the parameters from which Mbororo ethnicity is being built and redefined in different terms.

Thus, the paper is the result of an ethnographic approach to the practice of facial incision among the Mbororo from Cameroon in order to deepen understanding of how the body is structured around discourses of identity and how ethnicity is performed, as well as the construction of political subjectivity in the context of African Postcoloniality.