1. Mbembe's critique is based on the system of single party rule that has been in place, at one point or another, in most African nations since independence. Cameroon has seen two such regimes: one under Ahmadou Ahidjo from 1960 until 1982, followed by that of his former Prime Minister, Paul Biya, until the present. Although Mbembe's discussion of single party governance applies to numerous cases in different postcolonial nations, he focuses his critique on the material specificities of Cameroon, one of the more flagrant cases in sub-Saharan Africa. Jean-Marie Téno's 1999 documentary film Chef! depicts the horrific abuses of power that are part of everyday life in Cameroon.

2. For more see Mbembe's article, “Necropolitcs.”

3. The theme of rape and prostitution is portrayed as hereditary. Tanga's mother is born of rape (“née d’un miracle” [41]), after which Tanga's grandmother, an Essoko princess named Kadjaba Dongo, gave herself up to the sexual advances of countless men (42). Rejected by her own mother, at the age of thirteen Tanga's mother forces palm nuts into her vagina, enacting a self-inflicted rape.

4. Incompossible worlds, according to Gilles Deleuze are the range of possible worlds which, because of inherent contradictions (in one world Adam is a sinner, in another he is not), cannot possibly exist in the same space-time; hence their “incompossibility.” In the baroque, these incompossibilities appear together (Le Pli 79).