ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the performative manifestations of pilgrimage tourism that connect African Americans to Ghana through the one Africa ideoscape. Selective history can discount the variety of ways in which African chiefs, merchants, war captives, and political dissenters might have had very different roles in the slave trade. Furthermore, this narrow portrayal of the slave trade becomes reified in the context of television shows, performances of PANAFEST and Emancipation Day festivities and their re-broadcasts on TV, radio programs, newspaper accounts, and performing arts publicly displayed. The above depiction of Africans as victims and Europeans as villains is reinforced by tour guides' interpretations of Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle, some of the plaques at official memorial grounds, as well as public performances held during select times in the pilgrimage tourism calendar. Actually being at Cape Coast Castle and witnessing the powerful sensory aspects of slavery heritage manifested in such performances, audience members may internalize the memoryscapes and ideoscapes on offer.
