Emotive histories: the politics of remembering slavery in contemporary Ghana

Abstract

New narratives about the role of Africans in the history of the slave trade in Ghana are emerging from unexplored vectors within the black Atlantic, breaking the previous silence about the topic since many of West Africa's elite families have ambiguous histories as both slavers and slaves. Heritage tourism, heavily backed by a state eager to build an industry, has brought Ghanaians into contact with the very different perspectives of comparatively more prosperous diasporan Africans, and has meant that Ghanaians have produced monuments and stories about the past in a new vernacular which differs from extant oral traditions and material culture. The incorporation of these stories into the heritage tourism industry has rendered them into a form of currency. In spite of this flawed function, they also serve emotional needs of diasporan and African communities alike, producing new structures of feeling while simultaneously performing to the demands of contemporary political and economic needs. This essay traces the contemporary conflicts, both local and transnational, made visible by the contradictions in accounts of the past and seeks to locate markers of the past made visible in material objects, particularly gifts between Africans and Europeans that speak to histories of complicity in the slave trade. Consequently, it also explores the complexities of the history of the post-independence relationship between Ghanaians and diasporans. Nonetheless, this essay insists that a new cultural space has opened up in which Africans themselves are authoring new narratives about their past, and a contemporary transatlantic generation offers a genuine engagement with the past, an escape from the stigma of slavery, and a shared sense of regret and empathy in relation to the difficult legacy of the transatlantic trade.