At the Interstices of the (Post)-Colonial: Mapping Tradition and Transformation in Ghanaian Maritality from Marita to Changes

Abstract

The idea of modern postcolonial Ghana as a complex polity forged at the interstices of colonial Encounter, and also one that has a tangible basis in millennia-old traditional African cultural values embedded in institutions that are subject to transformations over time has been argued or suggested by many scholars, prominent amongst whom are Angmor (1996), Anyidoho (2000), Larbi Korang (2009), and Konadu and Campbell (2016). On no other cultural institution have those critical lenses been more focused than the institution of marriage which, for obvious reasons, has tended to be seen as a critical cultural barometer that measures both societal health and the gendered power relations which delicately scaffold it. Not surprisingly, in the field of creative arts, successive generations of Ghanaian writers have attempted to investigate and represent the conjugal union as both the micro-site of the communal essence that ultimately enlarges itself into the nation-state, and also one whose gender-based relational compromises are constantly complicated by the interpellating external ideological forces of colonization, modernization, trans-nationalization and their suffocating necropolitical logic. Our article proposes to investigate the changing representations of marriage in Ghanaian prose fiction with emphasis on transformations in gender relations, and how these are in turn informed by transnationally motivated forces such as colonization, modernization and globalization. More specifically, we shall attempt to map paradigmatic shifts in gender relations within the institution of marriage as represented in two canonical and epoch-defining Ghanaian novels; namely, Marita and Changes while at the same time isolating what, if any, Ghanaian values have survived and can teased out as the enduring markers of gender relations in the institution of marriage, and therefore be counted as part of a blueprint for a future prolegomena of Ghanaian values.