Jane Saffitz
University of California-Davis
"The Three Bodies: Theoretical Insights into the Albino Body in Tanzania"
In Tanzania, 71 individuals with albinism have been murdered in occult-based killings in the last five years to satisfy a burgeoning transnational underground market for the sale and consumption of albino limbs, organs, and hair. Based on fieldwork conducted in Western Tanzania during the summer of 2012, I trace the tenuous nature of this demand for albino body parts while accounting for the alleged involvement of the fishing and mining industries, and consider the functions of rumor and discourse in propagating ideas about the supernatural powers of albinos. I then examine how the albino community and the Tanzanian state have responded to these murders, paying particular attention to the myriad ways in which albinos construct their subjectivity amidst everyday experiences of fear and violence, stigma and discrimination, alienation and isolation. In doing so I engage with a growing body of literature on the anthropology of invisibility to explore how Tanzanians with albinism are rendered invisible or hyper-visible by the masses. Additionally, I investigate how the postcolonial state, "development apparatus," and neoliberal ideology are complicit in the infliction of multiple forms of violence against albinos. I maintain that the Tanzanian state, in its commitment to preserving its reputation in the international community as a nation of piece, has been able to further its political and economic agenda by appealing to donor countries, intergovernmental, and nongovernmental organizations as the beacon of modernity, denouncing albino-killers as proponents of tradition and therefore antithetical to the nation's development goals, and by embracing human rights discourses.
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