Classics and the politics of Africanization in Ghana

Abstract

During the early years following Ghana’s political independence from British rule, calls were made for university education to have ‘an African character’. As a field steeped in Eurocentric narratives, how did the Classics survive, and how did classicists respond to the politics of Africanization? This paper draws on the political contexts under which secondary and tertiary education in Ghana underwent reforms to discuss the threats and challenges these reforms posed to the sustenance of the field of Classics, and the decolonization strategies classicists adopted during the calls for Africanization in university education. The paper suggests that the idea of ‘world civilization’ which does not consider one civilization as superior over another cemented decolonization efforts in the early post-independent era, and helped classicists meet the conditions of ‘relevance’ in the African context through comparative studies. Current attempts at decolonizing Classics in Africa would benefit from these strategies if applied to both research and curriculum development.