The Articulation of Collective Slave Memories and 'Home' among Expatriate Diasporan Africans in Ghana

Since the launch of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Slave Route Project, several researchers have taken an interest in understanding the manifold and pernicious repercussions of the Transatlantic Slave Trade on both continental Africans and those is the diaspora. Considerable attention has been devoted to diasporan Africans' self-conception and cultural identity. DeBois' (1915) seminal collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folks, drew attention to the African-American cultural experiences in the US. He put forward the concept of 'double consciousness' to describe facets of the African-American's split personality. Since then a number of theoretical and empirical studies have examined the diversity in African-American identity (Cross, 1991; Gates, 1989; Worrell et al, 2001). As Eyerman (2004) notes, the African-American label was not a natural category to assume, but is rather borne out of the collective memory of slavery.