Comment sortir de la sorcellerie ? D’une société orale à une expérience de médiation transculturelle dans la banlieue parisienne

Abstract

The belief in witchcraft, which Africans commonly invoke as an explanation for their physical suffering and their misfortune, is an expression of persecution: “If I suffer, it is because someone close to me wishes me ill, and has cast an evil spell”. In the first part of this article, the author, who is an ethnologist with considerable experience in the field and a mediator for African families living in the suburbs of Paris – whose children have been brought before the juvenile court – explains how the Bamileke people of Cameroon manage to free themselves from their belief in the effect of witchcraft through the ritual acknowledgment of three types of debts (infinite, symbolic, reciprocal), and in reality by three types of discourse: that expressing persecution; that which expresses the so-called state of unbelief, which in fact banalises the significance of the dualistic conflict, just as making a joke out of the situation may do; and thirdly, that which expresses a normative approach to religion, through which the individuals concerned become reintegrated within the structural order. In the second part of the article, the author shows how this cycle involving three specific types of verbal expression can be used in the process of mediation to assist African families to free themselves from the belief in witchcraft that they resort to, and cling to when their children are in difficulty. As these three changing forms of verbal expression can be transposed from one cultural context to another, it is concluded that they thus have a transcultural significance.