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Whispers and Silences: Explorations in African Oral History
- Africa Today
- Indiana University Press
- Volume 50, Number 2, Fall/Winter 2003
- pp. 41-53
- 10.1353/at.2004.0011
- Article
- Additional Information
Western-trained historians have long employed a variety of methodological and theoretical approaches when analyzing African oral narratives. In almost all cases, they have emphasized recording and analyzing 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 analyzing 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 analyses 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.