4pm-6pm
Humanities Quadrangle HQ276, 320 York Street
An ongoing conspiracy theory in Cameroon and neighboring Gabon associates the omnipresence of Freemasonry among the national elite with both homosexuality and illicit enrichment. In their recent book, Conspiracy Narratives from Postcolonial Africa, Peter Geschiere and Rogers Orock trace how this narrative has created an explosive moral panic about a supposed proliferation of homosexuality since 2005. Their analysis raises broader questions about one of the major challenges for academics today: how to deal with the tsunami of conspiracy theories that haunt politics globally. In their presentation at Yale University, they will also focus on issues of gender and sexuality.
Peter Geschiere is emeritus professor for the Anthropology of Africa at both the University of Amsterdam and Leiden University in the Netherlands. Since 1971 he has undertaken historical-anthropological fieldwork in various parts of Cameroon and elsewhere in West and Central Africa. Rogers Orock is assistant professor of Africana Studies at Lafayette College, whose work examines elites and the moral imagination of political leadership, governance, and development in Central and West African societies.
The event will be moderated by Graeme Reid, an anthropologist and UN Independent Expert on Protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI), and a research scholar and lecturer at the Jackson School.
Co-sponsored by Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, Yale Research Initiative on the History of Sexualities, Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies, and the Department of Anthropology.