ABSTRACT
Scholars in comparative rhetoric have noted that even as the field seeks to expand its methodological apparatus beyond Euro-American domains, Africa’s rhetorical traditions remain largely undertheorized. This chapter attempts to fill this gap by focusing on the complexities of rhetorics in Africa’s postcolonial contexts. In doing so, it argues that rhetorics in postcolonial African contexts remain marked by the tensions and fissures between rhetorical norms and expectations across colony and metropole, resulting in hybrid traditions and practices. To illustrate the point, the chapter examines the writings of Mabel Dove, a pioneering twentieth-century Ghanaian nationalist, feminist, journalist, and activist. Dove’s writings, I argue, offer rhetorical critics one way to envision our enactments of rhetorical criticism within the larger project of comparative rhetorical scholarship. By analyzing Dove’s work, I reveal the tensions between precolonial and colonial rhetorical expectations and traditions, and draw on postcolonial theory to posit the concept of hybridity as a useful heuristic with which to investigate postcolonial rhetorical traditions. The chapter concludes by signaling the implications of the tensions inherent in hybridity for the study of contemporary, postcolonial African rhetorical traditions.
