Emotions, Transcendence, Differentiated Voices and Resistances at Cape Coast Castle in Ghana: Poetic Analysis

Abstract

The study discusses experiences of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade symbolically represented in Ghana by the Cape Coast Castle. It considers the themes of emotions, transcendence, differentiated voices, and resistances characterised tourists’ experiences of heritage tourism in Ghana. There is already a small but growing literature on heritage tourism in Ghana. But this literature focuses on econometric insights and little consider the emotions and transcendence, differentiated voices and resistances involved in such heritage tourism. This present study then adopts a novel approach of poetic analysis, by employing research and interpretative poems to analyse the transcribed data. It involved observation and in-depth interviews of 50 informants selected through accidental sampling procedure. The study revealed that the deployment of poetry provides a conduit to express complex, heteroglossic forms of reality that move beyond the conventional methodologies common in tourism research. As such, it has contributed to both local and international theories on heritage tourism.