Animality: Animal imagery, characterization, and the articulation of difference in Victor Yankah’s dear blood

Abstract

Drawing on the literature on animality, this paper examines animal imagery or animality as a strategy of characterization and the articulation of difference in Victor Yankah‘s Dear Blood (2014). Specifically, the paper focuses on metaphors and similes that are embedded in proverbs as locations of animal imagery. It argues that animal imagery or animality is integral to how Yankah frames characterization, agency, voice, and the quest for an inclusive postcolonial society. Through the use of animal imagery or animality, Yankah recreates Sophocles‘ Ismene and Antigone within a Ghanaian sociocultural context as Panyin and Kakra. Seen from this vantage point, Dear Blood emerges as not just an adaptation, but a play with its own thoughts and modes of becoming. Overall, the paper seeks to answer two key questions: what is the dominant imagery in Yankah‘s Dear Blood? What are the ethico-aesthetic entailments of this imagery? The paper shows that animal imageries of domestication and the wild constitute the dominant means by which Yankah frames not only the different approaches of Penyin and Kakra to power, but more importantly, the possibility of woman‘s voice in the public space.