Beyond Written Autobiography: Toward an Akan Theory of Oral Autobiographical Voice in the Folktales of Kweku Ananse and Kweku Tsin

This study reconsiders the conventional boundaries of autobiography by examining how selfhood may be constructed beyond written individual life narratives. Traditional theories of autobiography, particularly those associated with Philippe Lejeune's concept of the autobiographical pact, emphasise the relationship between author, narrator, and protagonist within a retrospective written account of personal experience. While this model remains foundational, it provides limited space for understanding oral traditions in which identity is produced through performance, repetition, communal recognition, and cultural memory. Drawing on developments in autobiography and life-writing studies, theories of narrative identity, and scholarship on African oral traditions, this study proposes the concept of Oral Autobiographical Voice as an Akan model of self-representation. Through a qualitative close reading of Paul Radin's published versions of two Akan folktales, "How Spider Obtained the Sky-God's Stories" and "How Wisdom Became the Property of the Human Race," the study examines how Kweku Ananse and Kweku Tsin acquire enduring narrative identities through successive oral performances. The analysis argues that these figures do not constitute autobiographies in the conventional written sense; rather, their autobiographical voices emerge through four interconnected processes: narrative continuity, communal authorship, performative selfhood, and cultural memory. Ananse's acquisition of storytelling authority and Kweku Tsin's transformation of inherited wisdom demonstrate that identity in Akan oral tradition is not produced through individual authorship but through collective acts of narration, performance, and remembrance. By proposing an Akan theory of Oral Autobiographical Voice, this study expands autobiography from the writing of one's life to the broader construction of a recognizable self through oral performance and cultural transmission. It contributes to life-writing studies by challenging the assumption that autobiographical self-representation is exclusively textual, individual, and written, while demonstrating the complexity of African oral traditions as alternative spaces for the production, preservation, and negotiation of identity.