In a recent talk entitled “Akosombo Stories: The Methodological Challenges of Researching Postcolonial African Histories” Stephan Miescher of the University of California, Santa Barbara used his ongoing research project on the social and cultural history of the Akosombo Dam in Ghana to assess the difficulties of researching post colonial Africa and offer some possible solutions. While in part his discussion addressed the terrible state of many official records from the postcolonial period in Ghana due to political instability, coups and a lack of resources, Miescher’s larger point was one relevant to all historians, a reminder that no matter how complete and well-preserved the official archive, it always tells only a partial story.
Cover of booklet, The Volta River Project (Accra: Ghana Information Services, 1963), Courtesy of Stephan Miescher
The government agency most relevant for Miescher’s work, the Volta River Authority (VRA), charged with the construction and operation of the hydro-electric Akosombo Dam, commissioned in 1966, has maintained extensive, well-organized records. However, as Miescher demonstrated, the VRA archive tells only a small part of the story of the creation of the Volta River Project. The Akosombo Dam was the centerpiece of both the Volta River Project and Kwame Nkrumah’s modernization program and also led to the displacement of the more than 80,000 people living in the Volta River basin before the construction of the dam. As do all archives, the VRA collection demonstrates an ideological bias, in this case the ethos of high modernism. This ideology led to the creation of the archive and library itself as part of the creation of a model “modern” organization complete with all its trapping . The VRA archive reveals too how the dam was promoted with travelling exhibits, a mobile cinema van and other public spectacles, firmly situating it the project of both nation-building and third-world modernism. The relocation was even cast as an exercise in modernization. Displaced residents would be resettled in “modern” townships with allegedly superior facilities. However, the voices of the tens of thousands of people displaced or affected by the dam expressed through petitions and letters, only appear in the VRA archive sporadically.
Miescher complicates and thickens the narrative provided by these records with sources from popular culture, private papers and most notably oral histories. These sources reveal how far removed the actual experience of relocation was from to the optimistic plans laid out by the VRA. Those relocated were provided with a one room house, without bathing or kitchen facilities with the expectation that residents would build two additional room themselves. However, many never did and a large number were unable to make a living in the new settlements. The town of Kete-Krachi, for example, once on a bustling trade route and the site of an important Dente shrine, was relocated to the isolated tip of a peninsula surrounded by the Volta Lake. Through the medium of film, Miescher, in collaboration with film-maker R. Lane Clark, was able to provide a vivid illustration of the different experiences and points of view of those involved with and affected by the Akosombo Dam.
By showing a short film contrasting the viewpoints of the VRA officials who orchestrated the relocation of communities and those who were displaced, Miescher was able to supplement the official archive, whose bureaucratic language could not convey the profound sense of dislocation and trauma that many suffered as a result of the relocations. By using oral history, Miescher was also able to capture the diverse ways in which relocation was experienced, including organized resistance, a notable absence in the official record. Yet the lesson from Miescher’s presentation is not only to supplement archival research with oral history, a long-established methodology in the study of African history, particularly in the colonial period. Rather it is to pay attention to the various ways that people make sense of history and to interrogate the ways in which various repositories of knowledge about the past exist in tension with one another. And while historians working on an earlier period may not able to conduct oral history or use precisely the same methodologies, Miescher’s work reminds all historians of the importance of paying attention to diverse sites of knowledge production and looking beyond the most accessible, well-preserved archives, however tempting they might be.
Tags: African history, archives, Ghana, History Compass Exchanges, methodology, oral history
February 10, 2010 at 12:12 pm |
While we all know that archives are only incomplete records of the past, I think the most important thing this piece discusses is how “the VRA collection demonstrates an ideological bias, in this case the ethos of high modernism.” In our research we tend to forget that all archives are created for a particular purpose, which is not just objective preservation. But we don’t always take this into consideration as part of our research strategy. Well done, Jean!
Fort those interested in the ideological politics of archival preservation, a similar theme is developed in Rebecca Jennings, “Lesbian Voices: The Hall Carpenter Oral History Archive and the Politics of British Lesbian History”, Sexualities 7:4 (2004): 430-445.
February 11, 2010 at 3:02 pm |
[...] Jean Smith recently reminded us in another Compass posting, we need to look outside the traditional archive for fuller and richer histories of the past. [...]
March 31, 2010 at 3:34 pm |
[...] Jean Smith recently reminded us in a History Compass posting, we need to look outside the traditional archive for fuller and richer histories of the past. [...]