Short Abstract

This panel asks occult, ritual, satanic and other supernatural and criminal narratives manifest in media, gossip and general public discourse in contemporary Africa. It places the African occult within a neoliberal, hypermodern framework of conspiracy theory and collective anxiety.

Long Abstract

This panel draws on the convenors’ most recent books: Rogers Orock and Peter Geschiere’s Conspiracy Narratives in Postcolonial Africa: Freemasonry, Homosexuality, and Illicit Enrichment and Nicky Falkof’s The Devil Made Me Do It: Understanding Occult Crime in South Africa. It asks how occult, ritual, satanic and other supernatural and criminal narratives manifest in media, gossip and general public discourse in contemporary Africa. While there is a significant body of work on these questions, much of it emphasises an anthropological approach that treats such narrative forms as embedded in African cultural histories and practices. This panel aims to add to that scholarship by offering a prismatic perspective which considers the differences and similarities between current iterations of African occult narratives, treating them not simply as ‘African’ but also as elements of a hypermodern and neoliberal tendency towards collective anxiety. It will ask how occult imaginaries are mediatised, digitalised and transmitted across different contexts on the continent. It will discuss particular case studies of occult narrative as exemplars of both flexible African belief systems and the contemporary trend toward conspiracy theory, as seen in globalising phenomena like QAnon and pandemic-era vaccine hesitancy. Presenters will discuss research from Cameroon, South Africa and elsewhere on the continent.

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