The Lure of the Image in the Mirror: A Reading of Kwame Nkrumah’s Towards Colonial Freedom

Nkrumah’s Towards colonial freedom is a statement on the nature of colonialism and imperialism; and a strategy for combating them. The work, cast through a nationalist framework, carries a fixation on the superstructure of colonial society to the exclusion of its economic base. Thus conceived, the anticolonial struggle, at a superficial level, fights colonialism and imperialism. At a fundamental level, it leaves intact the structures—capitalism—that define colonialism and imperialism. Such is the trajectory that Kwame Nkrumah, in this work, traces towards colonial freedom.