Nkrumah and the Crowd: Mass Politics in Emergent Ghana

Erik Johnson Northwestern University

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article analyzes Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah, which was published to coincide with Ghana’s independence on March 6, 1957. Whereas the political and social imagination of the Anglo-American world during the postwar years was riddled with anxieties concerning the masses, the crowd scenes of Nkrumah’s Ghana elaborate the characteristics of a political community centered on mass society. The article concludes by noting the possibility of a mass civic art culled from the rhetorical tradition of Ghana.

Journal
Advances in the History of Rhetoric
Published
2014-01-02
DOI
10.1080/15362426.2014.886934
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