Ghanaian Woman and Dutch Wax Prints: The Counter-appropriation of the Foreign and the Local Creating a New Visual Voice of Creative Expression

Abstract

This essay explores the role of textiles, particularly Dutch wax prints, in the lives of women in Ghana, West Africa. Wax prints are colorful message-bearing printed cloths produced in Holland, based on Indonesian batik designs that express meaningful messages. Central to this discussion is the practice of counter-appropriation, that is, how women as individuals are in dialogue with culture by transferring the foreign, in this case Dutch wax prints, into the local in a culturally appropriate way. It positions women not only as cloth distributors and consumers, but also as producers of knowledge through the phenomenon of naming.

This paper builds on the work of Professor George Clement Bond who, over a 20-year period, explored the impact of the movement of rural Yombe men of northern Zambia in search of wage employment and how this migration challenged their kin-based cults. Instead of rejecting capitalism, Yombe society members adjusted it to coexist with the ancestor cult. However, Yombe laborers did not merely appropriate money; by imbibing it with the spirits of the ancestors, they made it a new and meaningful form. In a similar vein, Ghanaian women culturally redefine factory printed textiles from a Dutch import by assigning them local meaning and value through the phenomenon of naming, resulting in an object accepted as foreign that is synthesized and indigenized into something that is meaningful and useful to them, becoming a “visual voice” for creative expression. This essay will show Dutch wax prints as a realm in which women play a key role not only as distributors and consumers, but also as producers of knowledge and of a new cultural form. It positions women as active participants in the global markets who have taken advantage of the economic opportunities offered by technological changes and the subsequent reordering of class relations of production.