This has a name: Witchcraft, suspicion, and circumlocution in Central Angola

Abstract

The literature on witchcraft has focused predominantly on the accusation of witches, the procedures for establishing guilt, and the effects thereof. However, during my fieldwork in Central Angola, I did not encounter processes of accusation but rather a prevailing mood of unresolved suspicion. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted between 2014 and 2019, this paper theorizes the relationship between witchcraft and suspicion by examining the micro level of social interactions in which witchcraft narratives emerge. It explores how suspicion operates through circumlocution and tautology, arguing that it thrives on indeterminacy, doubt, and suspended indication—elements that structure the dialectic between the general and the particular in witchcraft. This tension allows the relationship between witchcraft and witches to remain open, conditioned not only by social conventions of plausibility and hierarchical relations that position witches and sorcerers but also by the contingencies of how these conventions are enacted in specific interactions.