Africana Studies lecture: The New “Magic” of Power? Freemasonry and Postcolonial Homophobia in Central Africa

Africana Studies is pleased to be hosting Rogers Orock from Louisiana State University March 20 for his lecture entitled “The New ‘Magic’ of Power? Freemasonry and Postcolonial Homophobia in Central Africa.” By analyzing rumors and conspiracy theories about homosexuality and Freemasonry as new forms of witchcraft accusations against elites in Cameroon and Gabon, Orock underlines their connections to broader debates about struggles over sexual citizenship and the question of decolonization in Francophone Africa today.

Rogers Orock is an assistant professor in the Department of African and African American Studies at Louisiana State University. He was formerly a senior lecturer in Anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, South Africa. His work is focused on elites, leadership, and postcolonial political imagination in West and Central Africa through ethnographic and literary approaches that emphasize the value of everyday life in the popular grammars of power and struggles for meaning. His latest research is a collaborative study (with Peter Geschiere) of Freemasonry, postcolonial homophobia, and illicit enrichment of elites in Francophone Central Africa.

4:15 p.m. Mon., March 20 • OCGE 107 • MORE