The rule of the anus? Queer imaginaries of power in central Africa

Peter Geschiere’s most recent writings have come to attend, in increasing detail, to the moral and political panic provoked by the alleged rise of “homosexuality” in Cameroun. This article celebrates Geschiere’s queer turn for its original perspective on postcolonial political dynamics in the region. It particularly focusses on his rich analysis of recurring homophobic associations between same-sex sexuality and the elite procurement of illicit wealth that foreground the anus as a central figure of the popular imagination. This article stretches Geschiere’s interpretation of “anusocratie” by confronting his uptake of Achille Mbembe’s and Joseph Tonda’s remarks on anality-as-passivity with ethnographically informed counterexamples from the DR Congo that render anality as a queer force. This article also suggests some further possibilities and hypotheses that can help situate the supposed rise of anal sex as an occult technique for enrichment and empowerment within longer genealogies of power and transgression in Central Africa.