ABSTRACT
The chapter investigates the historical and ideological foundations of the Naam, a concept that was central to the history of political formation in the pre-colonial Voltaic region between the 16th and the 19th centuries. The Naam framework provided a rationale for the structuration of political power, the social order, the basis for cultural identity, and cultural continuities across the Volta region. State representations of voltaic society place state power at the junction of the collaborative dynamics of ancestral history and ritual authority. In this sense, the Naam was a trangressive notion that uses representations to construct social relationships that are in reality more complex and more contradictory than portrayed in state binaries. The Naam is ultimately an ideology that disrupts the ontological foundations of pre-moaga society while giving a new language that rationalises Mossi hegemony and state violence.
