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Paper short abstract

After the end of the slave trade, European slave castles in Ghana became courthouses, prisons, post offices – even a presidential palace. Some are ruins. What do these afterlives reveal? I explore the ongoing material and affective entanglement of colonialism, capitalism, and modern statehood.

Paper long abstract

Along Ghana's Atlantic coast stand dozens of forts and castles built by European trading companies during the transatlantic slave trade. After abolition, many became courthouses, police stations, post offices, prisons – one even served as a presidential palace. Some are now ruins, others are in use as museums. How can we think about what these structures and their afterlives reveal? Drawing on fieldwork at Fort William in Anomabu, I argue that such sites are material crystallization points for the ongoing co-constitution of colonialism, capitalism, and modern statehood. I propose to analyze the relationship between these not in terms of temporal sequence, but in terms of structural entanglement. Structural entanglements are always also affective arrangements that generate atmospheres – atmospheres that not only make colonial violence palpable, but sustain and reproduce it. Understanding these entanglements offers a framework for analyzing how colonial structures persist – not only through institutions and economies, but through the material and affective arrangements that continue to shape what bodies feel in the spaces they inhabit.