| Summary: | In the authoritarian Cameroonian context, the university is officially considered as a "closed and apolitical place". This article analyses the genesis and the evolution of the devices of power and resistance, in the broad sense finally used by Michel Foucault, relating to the freedom of expression of the students. Based on qualitative data collected as part of my doctoral research, the article demonstrates that these devices was made with progressive refinements related to changes in the political and social context. Between 1963 and 1965, in the first years of the university created in 1962, the authorities set up the two apparatus of power that will continue. On the one hand, we find the repression of student mobilizations and, on the other hand, the creation of student associations that we call "institutional". They aim to cope with the apparatus of resistance that are student demonstrations and "autonomous" students’ associations (that is, created by students). The strategic imperative is, on the side of power, to control student speech and, on the side of student resistance, to express themselves freely. The article shows that, beyond technical evolutions, these strategic imperatives persist until today, despite the reinstatement of multiparty politics in 1990.
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