Joseph Tonda

Who is Joseph Tonda?

Joseph Tonda is a sociologist and anthropologist of Congolese and Gabonese background. He is a specialist of Congolese and Gabonese culture, society, and politics, and is currently professor of sociology at the University of Omar Bongo in Libreville. He is also a regular visiting instructor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, France.

Tonda received his doctorate at the University of Grenoble in France and his Habilitation in 2003 at the EHESS. He is the author of Le souverain moderne, an analysis of the modern state in central equatorial Africa, its corporeal structure as an all-encompassing and "composite" power, whose sexualized imagery lies at the heart of its violent nature after independence.

Tonda's areas of specialization include the anthropology of religion, of medicine, and of the cults of the body in modern central Africa. He has also written on the relationship between violence, power, and the imaginary in central Africa. He is one of the founding members of the Association, Rupture-Solidarité, a network of Congolese dissident intellectuals.

He is also the author of two unpublished novels:

Myrtille

Les chiens de foudre