Echoes of the Past Resurface In the Present: A Thread in the Intellectual History of Ghana

Abstract

In this era of modernization, it is easy to be drawn and eclipsed into a totalizing paradigm of external cultures that clash with one’s inherent culture. Aware of the impending disaster facing African culture, it is pertinent to re-echo the voices of the pre, during and postcolonial Ghanaian writers on the prevailing issues in the African society and the option out. Using C.C. Reindorf’s, History of the Gold Coast and Asante (1895), Attoh Ahumas’ Gold Coast Nation and National Consciousness(1911), Casely Hayford Ethiopian Unbound (1911), Kobina Sekyi’s the Blinkards (1915) and Anglo-Fante (1918) and Ayi Kwei Armah’s the Beautiful ones are not yet born (1968) and Fragments (1969) as document text for the study, the paper stress on the paths in  these writers ideological reflections on the ‘troubles facing Africa’ as it relates with the existing prevailing forces. The paper suggests that regardless of the nemesis facing Africans, an introspective and retrospective action, and affectation to peculiar cultures to one’s culture is the only antidote that will salvage Africa and other continents as well.

Keywords: Africanism, Colonialism, Culture, Gold Coast, History, Self-consciousness