Linguistic Politics and Nation-Building in Contemporary Ghana: Re-engaging the Debate on African Literary Writings
摘要
Postcolonial contemporary Ghana is in search of human flourishing, which comes against the force of language and politics in fostering multiple demarcations. One such demarcation is framed around the issue of un/belonging. In this chapter, I deploy the animated politics around Ghana’s national cathedral to revisit Ghana’s literary debate on citizenship and nation-building. Using the literary works of Kofi Awoonor and Kofi Anyidoho, undergirded by a brief socio-historical context, this chapter sheds light on the complex issues of citizenship and un/belonging. Through these literary works, I posit that the force of Christianity as a transcendental religion and that of ancestors as immanent, complicate the debate in Ghana’s literary writings. All of this contributes to the dynamics of sociolinguistic and cultural ecologies of the ever-evolving twenty-first-century Africa and postcolonial contexts which have a strong bearing on conceptions of African identities/humanity.