Enemies

Prominence of Enemyship in West African Worlds

To understand the concept of enemy, it is useful to begin with the prominence of enemyship in many West African worlds. To say that enemyship is prominent in these worlds does not mean that overt acts or explicit declarations of malice are necessarily common or severe. Instead, enemyship is prominent as a collective representation that people appropriate when relevant—for example, an urban migrant wondering about resentment of rural relatives because of perceived insufficiency of remittances, a student worried about sabotage (by classmate competitors or envious relatives) in preparation for an examination or contest, a prosperous farmer or business owner concerned about malicious envy of neighbors, or people suffering from illness or misfortune—to make sense of everyday events. As such, enemyship is evident in cultural products (e.g., stickers that proclaim “let my enemy live long and see what I will be in the future”) and cultural practices such as sorcery, a set of techniques for sending harm to enemies or defending oneself against such harm; divination, a technique for analysis of misfortune that frequently produces accusations of interpersonal sabotage; and infant seclusion, a practice whereby mother and child remain indoors for several days after birth to protect against malicious envy.

Besides observable representations, the prominent concern with personal enemies also extends to private experience. Across diverse West African worlds (but especially rural areas and other spaces [Page 528]that promote embeddedness in dense, overlapping networks of relationship), the majority of people—sometimes as high as 90 percent—report that they are the targets of personal enemies. A typical response goes something like this: “I don't know my enemies, but I know that I have them. One day something will happen to me, and then I will know that this person has been after me all along.” Although most people in most circumstances do not suffer undue anxiety from the possibility of enemyship, they may become acutely concerned about potential malice from hidden enemies in certain situations. Likewise, although people may not identify a specific person who bears malice toward them (and typically deny that they bear malice toward anyone else), they have in mind certain interpersonal locations—including such intimate relationships as friends and relatives—from whom they anticipate malicious harm. In general, responses suggest that the prominent concern with personal enemies in West African worlds is a collective representation. People base their expectations of malice not on personal experience of an enemy relationship but on default assumptions about the relative “stickiness” of relationship in worlds that promote a sense of inherent connection, interdependence, and embeddedness in context.

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