Secret knowledge

Secrets as power boosters - a random find

The most powerful and sacred knowledge is considered secret, which is used to bolster the status of certain elders and chiefs. Just as the chiefs are protected from the profane world by the mediation of their akyeame or spokesmen (Yankah 1995), so too are powerful objects and events kept hidden and protected by indirection and secrecy. Most cultural and historical knowledge is considered to be secret and held by the elders; thus, it is called mpanyinsεm or elders’ matters.

Note that these poems contradict the message of the elders as cited in the article.

In the poem the elders say that the past is important. In reality they don't want to talk about it.

The secret nature of this knowledge is noted by authors in books that make that knowledge public. In the preface to a popular book documenting the various festivals of Ghana, A. A. Opoku (1970) wrote that it is difficult to give acknowledgments “in a book dealing with what is sacred and to some extent, secret in our cultural heritage.”

In a review of two books documenting different Akan festivals, I. E. Boama (1954) wrote:

Two Twi festivals which every Akan should try to watch are Adεε [Adae] and Odwira. But there are many people who even if they have seen these festivals, they have seen only a part. Because only insiders have permission to see the true [or pure] activities. . . . If you are a citizen [child of the nation], buy [these books] to read, and if you know your nation’s secrets, you won’t avoid them. (Translation from Twi by Afari Amoako and myself)

Cultural knowledge, at its deepest or most pure, was thus considered hidden, not accessible to outsiders; books documenting them violated that secrecy by describing rituals to nonroyals and youth.

Note that these poems contradict the message of the elders as cited in the article.

In the poem the elders say that the past is important. In reality they don't want to talk about it.

Some history was also considered secret. As we walked down the main street of Larteh one day, one of my key informants, Teacher Asiedu, told me about doing his senior thesis for Presbyterian Training College in 1957 on the history of Larteh, and he came to talk to one elder in his hometown.

The elder told him he would not tell him anything unless he brought drinks, and by the time he returned, the elder had died. Another elder would not tell him anything, and Teacher Asiedu, then a young man, rebuked him, saying,

“If you don’t tell, then how will the children learn?”
“Why wouldn’t they say anything?” I asked Teacher Asiedu in Twi.
“Wosuro” (they are afraid), he said.
“What were they afraid of?” I asked. He said that they were afraid that they would reveal something secret and the bosom (spirit) would punish them.
(Field notes, 19 February 1999)

The secrecy of certain historical and cultural knowledge allows powerful elders to manipulate important decisions regarding property rights and political positions, which are entwined with family genealogy and local history. As William Murphy (1980) points out, the content of the hidden knowledge does not matter as much as the privileged society the secrecy creates.

References:

Learning How to Find Out: Theories of Knowledge and Learning in Field Research
CATI COE, Institute for Community Research
in FIELD METHODS, edited by H. Russell Bernard, Anthropology, University of Florida
Web link - PDF document

Dilemmas of Culture in African Schools: Youth, Nationalism, and the Transformation of Knowledge

Cati Coe, University of Chicago Press, 2005 - 241 pagina's

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