Building the Ancestral Public: Cemeteries and the Necropolitics of Property in Colonial Ghana

Abstract

Abstract This essay studies changes to mortuary practices in colonial Gold Coast (southern Ghana) beginning with the British state’s creation of town cemeteries in the late nineteenth century. It argues that the colonial state enforced cemetery burial because they realized Gold Coast people would never sell their land if it contained the remains of their elders; cemeteries were therefore a crucial tool in the transformation of land into private property for state dispossession. However, the invention of cemeteries had a significant impact on how communities worshipped, and conceived of, ancestral spirits. By gathering ancestors from the various households into a single site, the graveyard created an “ancestral public,” a community of ancestors who protected the community collectively. Their invention changed Gold Coast communities’ relationship to spirits, the afterlife, and property. What ensued were political contestations over rightful burial places, mortuary authority, and what will be called “the necropolitics of property”—the decision of who could, or who could not, enter the afterlife, and what consequences this had for estates.