Challenging moral corruption in the postcolony: Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born and Hannah Arendt’s notion of individual responsibility

Abstract

This article focuses on Ayi Kwei Armah’s <i>The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born</i> (1968), which portrays a nameless protagonist who clings to his own ethics as he resists corruption in Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana in the 1960s, an instance of what Achille Mbembe has called the postcolony. This situation bears comparison with Hannah Arendt’s political philosophy, which emphasises individual responsibility in political situations in which common democratic norms no longer apply. Based on Arendt’s insights, I claim that the ethical choices of Armah’s nameless individual suggest a way towards a better communal future. This article further suggests that Arendt’s political philosophy – read in critical dialogue with theorisations of the African postcolony – can offer valuable analytical approaches to discussions of moral decay in postcolonial Africa.