Translocality and the future: postcolonial connectivities in 1960s Ghana

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the translocality of 1960s Ghana. It brings into conversation the connectivities crafted by official state diplomacies conducted by Kwame Nkrumah’s government in the name of Pan-Africanism and the activisms, organizational work, and movements of Pan-African, diaspora, and white European women within and beyond Ghana, against the backdrop of a racialized global Cold War order. Focusing on the messiness and tensions of these connections I bring into conversation seemingly separate agential topics. Whether it is through state visits with Eric Williams, the tensions of minister exchange programmes with Guinea, or of diaspora conferences and organizing by African and Afro-American women, and the racialized and gendered dynamics of Nkrumaism, each is entangled and co-constituted with the wider ideational and material reality of the relational living postcolonial project. The variety of experiences, dramas, disputes, and possibilities, speak to how Ghana’s connections with the world were interpreted and used to advance visions of civil rights and Pan-Africanism, while also operating within, against, and beyond the state. The relational project of Nkrumaism demonstrates how translocal power can be crafted to change the nature of translocal entanglements, not erase them, but make them more equitable, while simultaneously reproducing underlying tensions.