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Exhibiting Ghana: Display, Documentary, and “National” Art in the Nkrumah Era

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Janet Hess
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Abstract:

The privileging of representation as a means of securing epistemological or ideological systems has been regarded as a Western phenomenon. The employment of cultural exhibitions, documentaries, and spectacle to advance systems of authority, however, is also characteristic of African political systems in the pre- and postcolonial eras. This article examines cultural exhibitions, documentary films, representations of Nkrumah, and commissioned “national” art in the context of independence-era Ghana. It employs existing archival records to trace the positioning of discursive representations as mechanisms of social indoctrination, and as paradigms of the construction of the political subject in the postcolonial era.

Résumé:

Résumé:

La valorisation de la représentation comme moyen de préserver les systèmes épistémologiques ou idéologiques fut considérée comme un phénomène occidental. Cependant, l’utilisation d’expositions culturelles, de documentaires et de spectacles afin de promouvoir les systèmes d’autorité est également caractéristique des systèmes politiques africains des ères pré- et post-coloniales. Cet article examine des expositions culturelles, des films documentaires, des représentations de Nkrumah, et l’art “national” mandaté dans le contexte du Ghana de l’ére d’indépendance. Nous utilisons les archives existantes pour retracer le positionnement des représentations discursives comme mécanismes d’endoctrinement social, et comme paradigmes de la construction du sujet politique dans l’ére postcoloniale.

Type
Articles
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , April 2001 , pp. 59 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2001

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