ghana

This dissertation speaks to a massive dearth of research in African electronic literature (African e-lit), a discipline that boasts a growing number of works but little scholarship. With African literature incorporating digital technology into its creative process, and with electronic literary criticism focusing on areas outside its predominantly western cannon, African e-lit positions itself as an important area of scholarly endeavor. After considering the implications of placing African e-lit as the direction in which both African literature and electronic literature take, this dissertation looks at three different genres of African e-lit in the context of oral literature. There are analyses of examples of concrete poetry, conceptual poetry, and mobile video games, all from Ghana. Ultimately, the aim of this project is to ascertain the ways in which oral tradition influences the nature, form, and shape of African electronic literature.

In Ghana, adinkra and kente textiles derive their significance from their association with both Asante and Ghanaian cultural nationalism. Adinkra, made by stenciling patterns with black dye, and kente, a type of strip weaving, each convey, through color, style, and adornment, the bearer’s identity, social status, and even emotional state. Yet both textiles have been widely mass-produced outside Ghana, particularly in East Asia, without any compensation to the originators of the designs.

In The Copyright Thing Doesn’t Work Here, Boatema Boateng focuses on the appropriation and protection of adinkra and kente cloth in order to examine the broader implications of the use of intellectual property law to preserve folklore and other traditional forms of knowledge. Boateng investigates the compatibility of indigenous practices of authorship and ownership with those established under intellectual property law, considering the ways in which both are responses to the changing social and historical conditions of decolonization and globalization. Comparing textiles to the more secure copyright protection that Ghanaian musicians enjoy under Ghanaian copyright law, she demonstrates that different forms of social, cultural, and legal capital are treated differently under intellectual property law.

Boateng then moves beyond Africa, expanding her analysis to the influence of cultural nationalism among the diaspora, particularly in the United States, on the appropriation of Ghanaian and other African cultures for global markets. Boateng’s rich ethnography brings to the surface difficult challenges to the international regulation of both contemporary and traditional concepts of intellectual property, and questions whether it can even be done.

Using the internet and social media for that matter to create literature is a relatively new and burgeoning phenomenon in Sub-Saharan Africa, complementing more common uses such as political activism, economic opportunity and social networking. In November 2013, some Ghanaians on Facebook started a trend where fictional quotes were intentionally misattributed to famous people. This humorous trend went viral as many users created variations while others also shared and commented on these posts. The project evolved through multiple stages and eventually ended in the publication of an e-book entitled My Book of GHcoats which contained submissions from many Facebook users. The nature of the evolution thus positions My Book of GHcoats in the realm of conceptual writing.
This paper reviews the development of the project and categorizes the various submissions to understand the logic that informed the organization and progression of posts on Facebook and in My Book of GHcoats. The paper also explores the implications of the project on conceptual writing. As a literary work of art, My Book of GHcoats interrogates notions of the political and asks questions concerning context, place and ownership while performing linguistic, aesthetic and symbolic functions that are circumscribed by a specific cultural milieu. The book also adds to work by major conceptual artists such as Vanessa Place and Kenneth Goldsmith who are interested in the procedure (rather than the result) of conceptualism by analyzing the relationship between process and product.

(Source: author's abstract)