Histories of Invisible Africa

Over a long period (since the nineteenth century), Africans have tended to lose control over the invisible world that many of them have believed to exist, with serious consequences that are very much to be felt today.  This is a theme that I have explored in particular in a book on Liberia (The Mask of Anarchy, 1999 and 2007) and in, more general and theoretical form, in a work coauthored with Gerrie ter Haar that encompasses all of sub-Saharan Africa (Worlds of Power, 2004).  This paper will sketch a theoretical approach to writing the history of the relation between Africa's material and invisible worlds within a long historical period.