Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This article presents an ethnographic analysis of the state-sponsored Pan-African Historical Festival (PANAFEST) and Emancipation Day celebrations that commemorate Ghana's history of Pan-African and slavery while promoting `heritage tourism'. I argue that with calls for African emancipation and Pan-African cooperation, these celebrations create the space for the state's concrete production of social meanings around history, politics, and, especially, race. This Ghanaian state `race-craft', specifically, is revealed through the deployment of a particular narrative of slavery that allows for not only the explicit claim to racial affiliation with diaspora Black communities, but it also enables the recalling of Ghana's own racialized heritage for the production of new national subjectivities. It is also significant that, along with the concomitant growth of the global heritage tourism industry, these PANAFEST/Emancipation Day celebrations are occurring within the context of a shift to a neoliberal economic agenda. As the Ghanaian state continues to host and sponsor these international Pan-Africanist events, it draws on its position in the global economy to craft local and transnational racial subjectivity.

Keywords

Emancipation Day Ghana heritage tourism PANAFEST racialization slavery

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Asomaning, H. (2005) `Understanding Emancipation/PANAFEST', 24 July, URL (consulted Aug. 2005): http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/entertainment/artikel.php?ID=86471

Boafo-Arthur, K. (1999) `Ghana: Structural Adjustment, Democratisation, and the Politics of Continuity', African Studies Review 42(2): 41-72.

Boafo-Arthur, K. (2007) `A Decade of Liberalism in Perspective', in K. Boafo-Arthur (ed.) Ghana: One Decade of the Liberal State, pp. 1-20. Dakar: CODESRIA Books.

Bruner, E. (1996) `Tourism in Ghana: The Representation of Slavery and the Return of the Black Diaspora', American Anthropologist 98: 290-304.

Carson, S. (1999) `Emancipation Day in Ghana', New York Daily Challenge (13 July).

Chrisman, L. (2003) Postcolonial Contraventions: Cultural Readings of Race, Imperialism and Transnationalism. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press .

Ferguson, J. (2005) Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press.

Gaines, K. (2006) American Africans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

Ghana Forum (1998) `Ghana Hosts First Black Emancipation Day in Africa', URL (consulted Jan. 2001): http://www.ghanaforum.com/news/reuters073098.htm

10.

Hartman, S. (2002) `The Time of Slavery', South Atlantic Quarterly 101(4): 757-77.

11.

Hasty, J. (2002) `Rites of Passage, Routes of Redemption: Emancipation Tourism and the Wealth of Culture', Africa Today 49(3): 47-76.

12.

Ifekwunigwe, J. (2006) `"Black Venus" in the "New" African Diaspora', in Kamari Clarke and Deborah Thomas (eds) Globalization and Race: Transformations in the Cultural Production of Blackness, pp. 206-25. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press.

13.

Mahama, A.A. (2001) `Vice Presidential Address at the Launching of PANAFEST/ Emancipation Day 2001', Accra, Ghana, 9 July, URL (consulted Feb. 2002): http://govt.ghana.gov/story.asp?ID=57

14.

Matory, J.L. (1999) `Afro-Atlantic Culture: On the Live Dialogue Between Africa and the Americas', in Henry L. Gates (ed.) Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, pp. 36-44. New York: Basic Civitas Books.

15.

Mills, C. (1998) Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race . Cornell, NY: Cornell University Press.

16.

Omi, M. and H. Winant (1994) Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. London: Routledge .

17.

Obetsebi-Lamptey, J. (2005) `Message from the Minister of Tourism and Modernization of the Capital City', PANAFEST 2005 Souvenir Brochure, pp. 5-6.

18.

Panafest (2005) Pan African Historical Theatre Festival: The Re-Emergence of African Civilization, souvenir brochure . Cape Coast, Ghana: PANAFEST Secretariat .

19.

Pierre, J. (2006) `Anthropology and the Race of/for Africa', in Paul Zeleza (ed.) The Study of Africa, vol. 1, Disciplinary and interdisciplinary Encounters, pp. 39-61. Dakar : CODESRIA Books.

20.

Pierre, J. and J. Shipley (2003) `African/Diaspora History: W. E. B. DuBois and Pan-Africanism in Ghana', in Toyin Falola (ed.) Ghana in Africa and the World: Essays in Honor of Adu Boahen, pp. 731-53. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.

21.

Richards, S. (2003) `Landscapes of Memory: Representing the African Diaspora's Return "Home"', presentation at the Second Bi-Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of Worldwide African Diasporas (ASWAD), Northwestern University, 2-4 October.

22.

Richards, S. (2005) `What is to be Remembered? Tourism to Ghana's Slave Castle-Dungeons', Theatre Journal 57(4): 617-37.

23.

Schueller, M. (2003) `Articulations of African-Americanism in South Asian Postcolonial Theory: Globalism, Localism, and the Question of Race', Cultural Critique 55: 35-62.

24.

Thomas, D. (2004) Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalization and the Politics of Culture in Jamaica. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

25.

Unesco (n.d.) `Slave Routes Project', URL (consulted April 2007): www.unesco.org

`The Beacon of Hope for the Black Race'

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References