Toward cultural narratology: Indigenous Frafra and Akan perspectives on resilience

Abstract

There is a distinct conceptualization of the problematic of resilience emerging from cultural narratives and ontologies/epistemologies in considering the possibility of surviving in our precarious present and uncertain futures. This article engages with the distinct narratives of Frafra and Akan Indigenous people for whom the narrative of storytelling is consciously and explicitly at the center of their culture-specific processes of resilience, including those deriving from building climate resilience and environmental adaptation. This article probes the important implications that a better understanding of narratives of resilience may have for the possibility of surviving in our precarious present and uncertain futures. It is suggested that Indigenous narratives of resilience, such as those represented in active Frafra and Akan traditions and ontologies/epistemologies highlight the relevance of bearing in mind cultural specificity for advancing the theorizing on resilience, and what thinking with, and through hegemonic resilience paradigms may entail. I conclude by making a strong case for the potential of cultural narratives to subvert and problematize resilience to reimagine alternative resilient ways of being and knowing in the world, while also touching upon some implications for inter-disciplinarity, trans-disciplinarity, and multi-disciplinarity.