AfricaBib 
bibliographic database
| Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | Whispers and Silences: Explorations in African Oral History |
| Author: | Greene, Sandra E. |
| Year: | 2003 |
| Periodical: | Africa Today |
| Volume: | 50 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Period: | Fall/Winter |
| Pages: | 41-53 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | Ghana Africa |
| Subjects: | African religions Anlo slavery oral history Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) History and Exploration Education and Oral Traditions Religion and Witchcraft |
| External link: | http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/africa_today/v050/50.2greene.pdf |
| Abstract: | Western-trained historians have long employed a variety of methodological and theoretical approaches when analysing African oral narratives. In almost all cases, they have emphasized recording and analysing texts produced for official or public consumption. But what of things not said, the stories, the statements made only in whispers behind closed doors, away from the eyes and ears of officials and family? What are we to make of statements that, by being offered in secret, defy the social consensus on what is appropriate, proper, and safe to discuss with insiders, outsiders, or both? This paper argues that an analysis of what is whispered and what is not said is as important as analysing what is said. It illustrates this point by exploring oral discourses that have swirled around the topics of slavery and traditional religious belief among the Anlo-Ewe of Ghana since the late 19th century. It demonstrates that analysis of whispers and silences reveals much about the stresses, strains, and opportunities associated with modernity that have had an impact on oral discourses about the past. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] |
