Sexual Diversity in Africa by Nyeck S. N.;Epprecht Marc;

Author:Nyeck, S. N.;Epprecht, Marc;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: 2013-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

Comparative Studies

8

Mobilizing against the Invisible: Erotic Nationalism, Mass Media, and the “Paranoid Style” in Cameroon

S.N. NYECK

Social sciences as enlightenment can profitably concentrate on critical examination and reconstruction of widely employed standard stories.

Tilly 2002, 42

What is the effect of affective and erotic relationships in social movements and party identification in Africa? To what extent do such relationships illustrate political core values, the success and failure of oppositional politics? In this chapter, I analyze the strategic use of homosexuality as blackmail in nationalist and political discourse in Cameroon. Political paranoid statements on “invisible homosexuals” displayed in the public sphere in Cameroon through the actions of media, government officials, and opposition leaders introduced a socio-cultural divide in the citizenry that explains the mistrust of state institutions, political compromise (Fukuyama 2004), and the stakes in the race for social capital (Fisher and Torgler 2006).1 As a strategy for change in the context of a long rule by a dominant political party, mobilizing against the invisible is a recipe for failure if the party that does so cannot incorporate the invisible as its core value. The party that mobilizes new issues without identifying with them incurs credibility costs if it leaves to chance or to its rivals the task of integrating such issues into mainstream political debates.

Jeff Goodwin (1997) noted the lack of empirical and theoretical research on the effect of affective and erotic relationships in social movements and collective action. In this chapter, I attempt to fill such a gap by analyzing the strategic use of homosexuality as blackmail in nationalist and political discourse in Cameroon. Political paranoid statements on homosexuality in Cameroon reveal a mistrust of public institutions. This deficit of trust in state institutions often expressed in forms of aversion (Brown 2006) is a serious challenge to democracy (Tilly 2008; Sapenza, Toldra, and Zingales 2007) and economic growth (Granovetter 1973; Mansbridge 1997; Neustadt 1997), especially in the developing world, and so the study of collective action should pay more attention to factual and symbolic realms of affective and erotic interactions. In Cameroon, discourse2 on homosexuality uncovers a source of the exacerbation of intolerance in politics: the quasi absence of political leadership committed to moderation as a strategy to mitigate social tension and able to clearly articulate political demands. What makes the Cameroon case particularly interesting is that, in contrast to other notorious instances of political homophobia in Africa (e.g., Reddy et al. and Nyanzi, this volume; Epprecht 2006), the accusations of homosexuality did not come from the state against civil society, but from civil society against the state. Thus, positive constitutional change in South Africa and attempts at negative constitutional change in Uganda and Burundi to repress homosexuality – plus the politicization of the homosexual subject in Nigeria, Egypt, Senegal, Gambia, Ghana, Malawi, and Cameroon today – legitimize research by political scientists on an issue that is often marginalized in the discipline.

The baring of the deficit of trust in state institutions in Cameroon is historically grounded in contentious political mobilization and representation.

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