We are thrilled to announce the publication of the first scientific output of FORAGENCY, available in print and in Open Access.
In, “Weaving the Future: Duiker Hides Trade and the Aka in Colonial Central Africa” , Etienne Gontard studies how, between 1920 and 1950, duikers were killed on an unprecedented scale in the Upper-Sangha and Lobaye riverbeds, peripheral portions of the French colonial empire. This exploitation was driven by the needs of the metropole’s leather industries, and executed first hand by semi-nomadic hunters-gatherers, the Aka. This chapter intends to craft an environmental history of this short-lived commodity and its world, inhabited by changing technologies and social relations, and the long-term changes induced by colonisation in Central Africa.
This is the next-to-last chapter of the edited volume Textures of Power. Central Africa in the Long 20th Century, co-edited by Florence Bernault, Benoît Henriet and Emery Kalema. This book offers groundbreaking, multidisciplinary reflections on power in Central Africa, from the Atlantic slave trade era to the present. By bringing together emerging and leading scholars, Textures of Power builds on the rich epistemic legacies of (Central) African studies, and opens new research avenues across history, anthropology, and cultural and political studies. It offers fresh perspectives on colonial and postcolonial power structures, drawing on new findings while critically engaging with earlier theoretical frameworks.
Employing the concept of “texture” as a red thread, the book showcases the central importance of power as an analytical tool in the humanities and the social sciences. It fosters dialogues between emotions and technology, colonialism and its aftermath, and between non-humans and the invisible world. Drawing on stories about women, social rebellions, digital technologies, slavery, languages, forest management, charms, care and bio-medicine, urban life, radio, music, witchcraft, homosexuality, and environmental pollution, this volume emphasizes bottom-up, long-term and emic approaches as well as local theories about power.
Textures of Power has been praised as “a bold and important book” by Marissa Moorman (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and “A must read” by Reuben Loffman, (Queen Mary University of London). For Pedro Monaville (McGill University), it is “set to become an essential reference for students of Central Africa, while the notion of textures of power that it introduces will resonate far beyond the region”. Didier Gondola (Johns Hopkins University) believes that Textures of Power “will resonate across disciplines for decades to come”.
Picture credit: Thornton Dial, History Refused to Die, 2004 (detail). Medium: Okra stalks and roots, clothing, collaged drawings, tin, wire, steel, Masonite, steel chain, enamel, and spray paint. Dimensions: 8 ft. 6 in. × 87 in. × 23 in. (259.1 × 221 × 58.4 cm). Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art