Reading :: Writing and Colonialism in Northern Ghana

Writing and Colonialism in Northern Ghana: The Encounter Between the Lodagaa and the 'World on Paper'
By Sean Hawkins

I picked up this book after seeing it being cited in the dissertation of one of our recently graduated PhD students, Stephen Dadugblor. (Stephen's dissertation is great, by the way.) To develop his argument, Stephen drew on this history of how the "world of experience" (here, the Lodagaa of Northern Ghana) encountered "the world on paper" (the writing regimes of colonialism) between 1890 and 1990. 

Hawkins draws on a diverse array of literature to understand writing and especially colonial writing. This literature includes names familiar to writing studies, such as Olson and Goody. Hawkins notes that, like Christianity and Islam, colonialism is a religion of the book (p.14), and to deal with the court systems, the LoDagaa (who did not possess laws) had to adopt foreign concepts from literate categories of social representation (p.31). 

For instance, the late 19th century colonialist regime had certain assumptions about people, including that they formed distinct tribes with powerful chiefs, and thus the regime attempted to install and maintain friendly chieftainships. These late 19th-early 20th century chiefs had a "near-monopoly of knowledge of writing" (p.122) that "allowed them to solidify their positions as intermediaries between the world on paper and those of farmers and migrant laborers" (p.123). Only in 1917 was a school established, and it was only for developing a governing class of chiefs (p.123). The role of chiefs was solidified by the postcolonial period (p.129). 

This latter point is an important theme running through the book. Later, the author discusses the concept of the family and notes the confusion that bishops, missionaries, and colonialist courts had in understanding family arrangements. Westerners assumed that marriage was a universal institution, yet the LoDagaa had a more fluid family arrangement that did match these expectations. Courts thus ruled on family disputes using a baseline set of expectations that the LoDagaa initially did not share, but had to adapt to. In one example, a bishop characterized "traditional Dagaare society," but Hawkins notes that "It was not the society of the past, but contemporary LoDagaa culture, that the bishop was describing," specifically a colonized version that was enforced by the courts (p.285).

In his conclusion, Hawkins references the example that I have been thinking about: Luria's expeditions to Uzbekistan. Here, he notes that unschooled Uzbeks interpreted shapes as real objects (ex: a circle would be called a plate or the Moon), while schooled ones described them as "geometric symbols, as things abstracted from the world of experience" (p.323). Similarly, "Because the words (conceptual language) used to represent the LoDagaa on paper were not generative of their practices or experiences, the use of writing as a medium of representation has resulted in a series of misrepresentations" (p.323).

And that's where I'll end this review. Like many histories, this book is long, dense, and detailed—but it's also intriguing and full of lessons for those of us who want to understand writing as a cultural practice. I recommend it!