Carrefour de la Joie: Popular Deconstruction of the African Postcolonial Public Sphere

Abstract

AbstractAfrican postcolonial rulers have made of the public sphere a space where through the production of violence and coercion they attempt to bring their subjects' bodies under an endless process of tight discipline, subordination and servitude.Moreover, they havemanaged to set up a politically structured sphere that not only restricts citizens' freedom of movement, speech and assembly, but also rationalizes their way of standing, speaking and walking. But the governmental claim to exercise full control over the public sphere is incessantly challenged by popular practices of insubordination and impoliteness. This paper which focuses on thecarrefour de la joie(‘space for pleasure’) in Cameroon demonstrates how through ‘immoral’ and ‘indecent’ behaviour such as drunkenness, debauchery and indiscipline, Cameroonian subjects have been striving not only to evade the suffocating restrictions that the ferocious Cameroon People's Democractic Movement (CPDM) regime imposes on their rights, but also to formulate a sharp critique of this postcolonial power.