Death without mourning: Homosexuality, homo sacer, and bearable loss in Central Africa

Abstract

Contemporary societies in Central Africa are known for their mourning ethos: Communities often engage in endless lamentation upon the death of their loved ones. Yet people experience the death of a family member differently, depending on the deceased's sexual identification. While the death of a person identifying as heterosexual is generally felt as unbearable, that of a person identifying as homosexual is experienced as bearable. Based on field research conducted in Cameroon, this article analyses the way in which contemporary Central African societies experience the death of persons identifying as homosexual. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben's notion of homo sacer, the article argues that, as a result of the pervasiveness of anti-homosexual ideologies and procreationist doctrines promoting vitalis moralis or the ethics of life, childless persons identifying as homosexuals have become 'homines sacri' whose deaths arouse little grief from the community because their existence was perceived as 'bare' or useless even before their death.