Dr. Nartey's Political myth-making, nationalist resistance, and populist performance analyzes the political discourse of Kwame Nkrumah, a revolutionary and political theorist who came to preside over Ghana after the country liberated itself from British colonial rule. As the leader of the first sub-Saharan country to achieve independence in the post-war period, Nkrumah had a profound influence on the global anti-imperialist movement. He is particularly known for his key role in promoting nascent African nationalism. This text examines Nkrumah's construction of what Nartey calls the ‘Unite or Perish’ myth, referring to the idea that the peoples of Africa must unite under one government to resist the existential threat of imperialism.
Political myth, as defined by Nartey, is a narrative which communicates dominant ideology. Crucially, the use of the word myth does not here denote that a particular narrative is necessarily untrue; rather, it refers to how the narrative simplifies complex historical events and suppresses alternative interpretations. The political myth is an unfalsifiable narrative that explains the current state of the world, and it is a powerful discursive strategy because it capitalizes upon ideas to which the audience already subscribes to persuade and mobilize.
Nartey examines Nkrumah's rhetorical construction and promulgation of pan-African unity using a synthesis of critical metaphor analysis and discourse-historical analysis. His methodology and tools are presented in chapter 3, where Nartey argues that the union of these two approaches allows the analyst to place mythic discourse in its appropriate historic and sociocultural context. In chapter 4, Nartey uses concordance and collocation analyses to identify the narrative archetypes invoked by Nkrumah in his construction of the Unite or Perish myth. These archetypes include, among others, ‘the conspiratorial enemy’, which seeks to oppress and destroy and whose treachery makes African unity an imperative; and ‘the valiant leader or the noble revolutionary’, a Messianic figure with the courage and foresight to combat the enemy.
In chapter 5, Nartey identifies several key conceptual metaphors deployed by Nkrumah—for example, politics as war—and analyzes how these metaphors interact with other linguistic tools, such as the personification of Africa and neocolonial forces, to create ‘mythic parallels’ of good and evil. Finally, Nartey considers Nkrumah's use of populist rhetoric to cast the people of Africa as a group that is politically homogenous, thereby enhancing his credibility as a leader and advocate of the people.
The thorough qualitative analysis of Nkrumah's rhetoric contained in this volume represents an important contribution to scholarly literature on myth-making, which has previously been almost entirely confined to Western contexts. Nartey's adept combination of critical metaphor analysis and discourse-historical analysis allows readers to understand the sociocultural context within which Nkrumah's rhetoric was created and the pivotal role Nkrumah played in shaping the course of African history during a crucial post-colonial period.
