(Post) Colonial Ghanaian Attitudes Towards Ibsen: An Overview of Ibsen Reception in Ghana Between 1930 and 1966

Abstract

During much of the twentieth century, Ibsen’s plays attracted the interest of many world theatres. In many western theatres and some non-western ones, the attraction to Ibsen by theatre practitioners was linked in different ways to the processes of modernization and the problems that come with it (FischerLichte 2008, 96). Colonialism and modernization are related to each other in complex ways (Gillen and Ghosh 2007, 1). In some colonial contexts, the modernization process was implemented as a “civilizing mission” (Jeyifo 2007, 608). This civilizing mission was largely dependent on print literacy produced by European colonizers to suit the needs of a local context (Willis 2018, 13). In colonized territories in Africa, literary texts were actively used in missionary works and mass literacy projects. The missions and the schools provided “good literature” (Newell 2002, 5) for readers to conceive of themselves as part of the larger British Empire. Additionally, the colonial administration used these transmission modes of literature to “track and control nations and populations” (Willis 2018, 13). As a consequence, reading regimes, practices, and performances were structured on the expectations and regulations of the colonial administration. Also, the system of transmission of literature in the colonies was perpetuated and controlled by the colonial administration. As agents, they did not seek financial capital but what Pierre Bourdieu refers to as “cultural capital”