Deviants subjectivities: witchcraft confessions in colonial Ghana

Abstract

In Ghana, during the first decades of the last century, witchcraft accusations increased and affected almost exclusively women. The consequence was the spread of antiwitchcraft cults deemed able to identify and heal the witches. Women adopted different strategies to cope with such accusations; some of them openly refused the accusations, while others embodied the general feelings and fears and confessed, not without dramatic contradictions, to be witches and to have committed brutal crimes. Through the analysis of the archival documents (court cases and reports by drafted by colonial administrators) and of some secondary sources (such as the works of Margaret Field), I discuss the practice of public confession as a way to normalize female behaviours and sexuality.