Debating Witchcraft in Africa: The Magritte Effect

Given the circularity of the witchcraft complex in Africa, given its performative potential, isn�t the flood of anthropological publications on the topic counter-productive insofar as it feeds what it pretends to analyse, and even stigmatize? Wouldn�t the social scientists be well advised not to emulate the media and the Evangelical preachers and to avoid bestowing on Africa the dubious privilege of being no more than a shadow theatre devoid of substance on the stage of which everything � power, work, production, economy, the family � would actually be played in the occult? In this publication, eight scholars � namely: Jean-Pierre Warnier, Didier P�clard, Julien Bonhomme, Patrice Yengo, Jane Guyer, Joseph Tonda, Francis Nyamnjoh and Peter Geschiere � engage in a lively and contradictory debate on witchcraft/sorcery in Africa in a controversial historical context.