Summary

The Ghanaian trickster-spider, Ananse, is a deceptive figure full of comic delight who blurs the lines around class, politics, and morality. David Afriyie Donkor keys in on social performance as a way to understand trickster behavior within the shifting process of political legitimization in Ghana. Donkor’s stories exploit the social ideologies of economic neoliberalism and political democratization. At the level of policy, neither was completely successful, but Donkor shows how the Ghanaian government was crafty in selling this fare to the people, adapting trickster-rooted performance techniques to reinterpret citizenship and the common good. Trickster performers rebelled against this takeover of their art and sought new ways to out trick the tricksters.

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Biography

David Afriyie Donkor is Assistant Professor of Performance Studies and Africana Studies at Texas A&M University. He is an actor and a director who has adapted several folktales, personal narratives, and literary works for the stage. His scholarly work is published in Ghana Studies, Cultural Studies, Theatre Survey, and TDR.