FOLDED SPEECH: AN ETHICS OF COMINGS-AND-GOINGS IN AN ACCRA ZONGO

“We are all strangers here. Like rice and stones, we are all mixed up. The zongo is a place on your way somewhere else.” This statement from one of my interlocutors in Nima, a zongo (Hausa settlement) in Accra, Ghana, raises fascinating questions about how zongo inhabitants make sense of a life on the move in which contradictory ideas exist side-by-side. What might life-ways steeped in multiplicity teach us about an ethics of living with others that relies less on abstract principles than on pivoting to gain another viewpoint? To answer this question, I draw on my fieldwork in Nima, Ghana’s most diverse zongo, where residents voice moral injunctions called “folded speech” that instruct people on how to try on multiple perspectives – an activity I term “an ethics of comings-and-goings.” To understand how folded speech works, I participated in everyday activities and conversations, conducted interviews, and collected diverse materials, such as folktales, social media, wall art, songs, and Islamic sermons. I suggest that folded speech not only helps individuals adapt to their rapidly changing environment, but also has the capacity to transform how they perceive and participate in the world. These findings hold important implications for how we understand an ethics of living together in our diverse, mobile world. Instead of focusing on resolving “the problem of diversity” or relying on abstract principles, my ethnographic material offers a different account of ethics – one that keeps doubt, wonder, and questioning alive.

Authorship (Academic - BU; Dissertation in-progress): Emily Williamson; Advisor: Professor Joanna Davidson; Funded by the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) Grant, BU Center for Humanities Dissertation Fellowship, BU Graduate Arts Research Grant, BU Initiative On Cities Research Grant, and BU Long-Term Graduate Research Abroad Fellowship.