Mystical Theory, Linguistic and Literary Theory and Rowland Abiodun's Yoruba Art and Language:Seeking the African in African Art
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Abstract
This essay unifies three central interests of mine, my quest for ultimate knowledge, the development of theory, large scale interpretations of phenomena, and African contributions to these pursuits as universally occurring human drives, in relation to Rowland Abiodun's exploration of Yoruba aesthetics in his Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art ( Cambridge, 2014, Second edition forthcoming, Compcros, 2022).
Cognitive and Aesthetic Mysticism
African Linguistic and Literary Theory
The Complex of Literary and Aesthetic Theories as a Unity of the
My Journey with Orí, Ọ̀rọ̀, Oríki, Òwe and Àṣẹ
Notes
Note 1
The Context of Mystical Experience
Mysticism in African Thought, Literature and Art
Note 2
Sacred Literature and Theories of Interpretation
Note 3
A primary cognitive goal of mine is a quest for ultimate knowledge. This involves constructing a structure of perception unifying all possibilities of knowing. It focuses on understanding what may be known by humanity and what is known, in a general sense, across disciplines, striving to grasp relationships between disciplines in relation to depth of understanding in particular fields. This is a continually unfolding cognitive progression, seeking, through a synthesis between intellectual, imaginative and contemplative exploration, to penetrate to the ultimate source of existence enabling all awareness.
This depth of understanding in specific fields implies growth in gaining a mental map of the field in question, its boundaries and configurations, what is known, what may be known and what cannot be known, as far as these last two can be ascertained. It involves developing a grasp of its epistemic and metaphysical complex, how knowledge is gained in the field and the role of that knowledge within the configuration of human knowledge generally as a continually reworked understanding of reality, a disciplinary map to which one may contribute to constructing through one's efforts in the field, a matrix enabling one appreciate the development of that field.
I develop this aspiration in the course of this essay in terms of a conception of cognitive and aesthetic mysticism, a quest for participation in or perception of the essence and unity of being through the cultivation of knowledge of self and cosmos in relation to sensitivity to art and beauty.
I correlate these aspirations with Rowland Abiodun's exploration of Yoruba aesthetics in his Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art. I engage his discussion of human powers of reflection and expression, ọ̀rọ̀, their projection in imaginative forms, òwe, the understanding of these forms as a convergence of essence and expression, oríki, and the relation of these ideas to divine mind and its intersection with human consciousness, Orí, within the context of cosmic dynamism, àṣẹ. The first section of the essay thus represents my primary cognitive goals. The second section addresses one approach to those goals.
At times one may ask oneself, "What do I really know?," in particular subjects, or about life in general. In reference to life in general, some of my favorite responses to this question evoke how minimal the totality of human knowledge really is in the scope of cosmic immensity. The US master of metaphysical horror, the fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft, constructed his imaginative universe out of this theme, demonstrated in his opening of "The Call of Cthulhu":
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
In the ultimate depths of his being man knows nothing more surely than that .. what is called knowledge in everyday parlance, is only a small island in a vast sea that has not been traveled [ an island illuminated by ] the little light [ of ] science and scholarship [a] small island of...so-called knowledge [ in contrast to ] the sea of infinite mystery...
(Foundations of Christian Faith, Crossroads, 1987, 22).
Cognitive and Aesthetic Mysticism
Cognitive and aesthetic mysticism, the aspiration to participate in the essence of being or perceive its nature through cultivating knowledge of self and cosmos, in relation to sensitivity to art and beauty, explores the human person, represented primarily by oneself, as well as the universe, in terms of their interrelationship and scope, aspiring to reach the ultimate foundations of this matrix.
The enquirer engages such questions as the meaning of being, exploring ''asking itself'' and ''thinking itself,'' reflecting on these issues in relation to various disciplines, in conjunction with art, beauty and meaningful patterns, in the hope of reaching the transcendence that underlies these possibilities.
Who am I? Am I this body of flesh, blood and bone? Am I the mind, the thoughts and the feelings which distinguish me from every other person? Analyse your entire personality. Try to find out where the I-thought begins. Trace thought to its place of origin, watch for the real self to reveal itself.
...
There are people of giant intellect who spend their lives gathering knowledge about many things [ but have not ] solved the mystery of man… What is the use of knowing about everything else when you do not yet know who you are? Human beings avoid this enquiry into the true self, but what else is there so worthy to be undertaken?
Those lines directly above are Hindu yogi Ramana Maharshi's guidance to Paul Brunton as may be summarized from Brunton's A Search in Secret India ( Random House, 2003, 156-9; 277-312) .
"Image [ standing here for aesthetic forms is general ], is an interface to information, and information is an interface to the infinite" states Laura Marks of convergences between new media art and Islamic art ( Enfoldment and Infinity, MIT Press, 2010), an idea correlatable with various conceptions of relationships between aesthetic forms and ultimate reality.
Dynamisms of essence and history, of identity and it's actualization, means of invocation of being and expression, of reaching into the cognitive foundations of reality, weaving relationships between the scope of human experience, its interpretive possibilities and the wisdom, knowledge and understanding that, shaping the cosmos, configure humanity as a sentient species, is how Abiodun's òwe and oríkì theory perceives imaginative forms. ''How far can such conceptions go beyond the readily perceptible into the sources of reality?,'' is an enquiry emerging from such considerations.
In contrast to questions about the weight of knowledge realised through the unification of what is known by humanity is one approach to cognitive mysticism which privileges the synthesis and transcendence of all the knowledge an individual possesses, a process Maurice Bucke depicts in Cosmic Consciousness (E.P. Dutton, 1923) as a means of entry into the foundations of reality. Aleister Crowley may be understood in his Confessions as arguing such a progression is best pursued through a conscious effort at maximum expansion, critical analysis and synthesis of knowledge. Holding that such awareness is possible through the mental and physical disciplines of Yoga, he further maintains that such insight is necessarily shaped by the
the extent of the universe which enters into it. One must really be a profound philosopher with a definite intellectual conception of the universe as an organic whole, based on the co-ordination of immense knowledge, before one can expect really satisfactory results. The Samadhi [ union with the essence of existence] of an ignorant and shallow thinker who has failed to co-ordinate his conceptions of the cosmos will not be worth very much ( Penguin, 1989, 243). [ Note 1]
The aspirant thus constructs a cognitive matrix they hope through meditation, or ritual, or both, to distill and transcend, thereby understanding existence in the networks of its specificities, its totality and its ultimate origins, even if this perception emerges from within the peculiarities of their own cognitive world, as such aspirations may be distilled from Crowley's account of Yoga in Magick: Liber Aba:Book Four ( Weiser, 2002, 7-44) and Dion Fortune in Applied Magic, who understands this process in terms of a union of knowledge and action, through which existence is understood, equilibrated, spiritualised and its essence absorbed (Thorsons, 1995,11-12). Crowley presents a visual description of his own experience of such cognitive unification in terms of
A universal space in which were innumerable bright points. Space appeared to be ablaze, yet the radiant points were not confused. A physical representation of the universe, in what I may call its essential structure.
Each of the blazing points was identified with the stars of the firmament, with ideas, souls [ and other phenomena constituting the cosmos beyond human construction and the cosmos as understood by humanity]. I perceived also that each star was connected by a ray of light with each other star. In the world of ideas each thought possessed a necessary relation with each other thought; each such relation is of course a thought in itself; each such ray is itself a star. … a direct perception of [an] infinite series [ in which rather than ] a homogeneous blaze of light…space is completely full and yet the monads which fill it are perfectly distinct.
(Confessions of Aleister Crowley, Penguin, 1989, 810. Structure of quote slightly modified from Crowley's own ordering of paragraphs)
The conditions of thought, time, and space are abolished. The All is manifested as the One. The Many and the One are united in a union of Existence with non-Existence. Each part of the Universe has become the whole, and phenomena and noumena are no longer opposed. The Object, what is known, and the Subject, the knower, become one, as all thoughts are pushed to their greatest development.
The normal mind is a candle in a darkened room. Throw open the shutters, and the sunlight makes the flame invisible. The rushing together of all the host of heaven would similarly blot out the sunlight. We suddenly recognize that this universal blaze is darkness; not a light extremely dim compared with some other light, but darkness itself. It is not the change from the minute to the vast, or even from the finite to the infinite. It is the recognition that the positive is merely the negative.
(Magick: Liber Aba:Book Four, Weiser, 2002, 38-41)
Theory is best understood as a global body of continually developing, contested, divergent and convergent approaches to making sense of aspects of existence, or of existence as a whole and its cosmic context. This has often been demonstrated in terms of aspirations to understand aspects of reality in their universal character, a controversial but deeply fertile aspiration even when the universal is understood as largely perceptible through the prism of the local.
All cultures are grounded in theories because without explanatory frameworks, people would not be able to make sense of existence. Complementing biological needs, are psychological needs, at the heart of which is the need to have life make sense, even if in a non-ratiocinative but emotional manner. Making sense of existence in terms of structures of ideas that clarify it's diversity, multiplicity and development constitutes the construction of theory, of which religions and philosophies are the best known examples.
Within the context of cognitive and aesthetic mysticism is the role of literature and literary theory, particularly as represented by Abiodun's Yoruba Art and Language. On account of its focus on discourse as a means of reaching from the immediate to the ultimate, of reaching from ayé, the material universe, to òrun, the world of ultimate origins, this book may readily be adapted to mystical ideas even though it does not use the term ''mysticism'' or correlative terms.
I am particularly interested in questions about relationships between language, literature and the meaning of existence. What have Africans said about this? What ideas may be further developed from those perspectives? How do these issues relate to the complex of ideas developed in African and other civilisations? Studies abound about conceptions of language in various African and non-African cultures. Texts also exist on relationships between the imaginative use of language, that being one understanding of literature, and fundamental meanings of existence. I get the impression, however, that African contributions to this complex of ideas need to be better highlighted. This can be done by using Yoruba Art and Language as an organising centre. [Note 2]
My exposure to the history and variety of literary and aesthetic theories across cultures helps me appreciate these theories as a potential unity of ontological approaches, relating to the intrinsic character of the art in question, and metaphysical and sociological perspectives, unifying the specificities of artistic form and expression with the abstractions of ultimate questions of meaning and the social contexts of human experience. A particularly helpful guide for me in developing this unification is the preface to Jonathan Culler's On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism ( Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983). Improving appreciation of his ideas for me are the sections he quotes in On Deconstruction from Alvin Goulder's The Dialectic of ldeology and Technology ( Seabury, 1976).
These ideas reach back to Placide Tempels on vital force in Bantu thought in Bantu Philosophy ( Presence Africaine, Paris, 1959) and are correlative with Negritude's adaptation of African and non-African understanding of such ideas, as in the work of French philosopher Henri Bergson, convergences discussed by Abiola Irele in his essays on Negritude, "What is Negritude?'' being a particularly rich demonstration of the power of this synthesis ( The African Experience in Literature and Ideology.Heinemann, 1981, 67-88).
Etubom Bassey reinforces this sensitivity to the epistemic foundationality of Nsibidi, in describing Nsibidi signs as central to the esoteric school, Ekpe, whose cosmogony depicts "the process of creation by the Supreme Goddess in Ekpe belief called Mboko. Nsibidi signs show the progression from when the world was a void to the start of creation and to the present state"[ in terms of ] "philosophical precepts...moral, spiritual, cosmological...that stand the test of time" ( quoted by Maik Nwosu in "In the Name of the Sign: The Nsibidi Script as the Language and Literature of the Crossroads,'' Semiotica 182–1/4 (2010), 285–303, 202).
Ivor Miller and Mathew Ojong's summation on Nsibidi are conclusive of those other views, ''The principles and philosophies of Ékpè practices and public displays were embedded in a perceived connectivity between the visible aspects of living things, which are empirical in nature, and the spiritual or the metaphysical” (“Ékpè ‘Leopard’ Society in Africa and the Americas: Influence and Values of an Ancient Tradition,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 2012, 1-16, 9). Ekpuk adapts and reworks this semiotic dynamism in creating his own scriptic and other visual forms, "I seek to arrive at a universal language that still retains the essence of the ritual communication of the ancient symbols and signs while I use them to interpret my present reality, " as he describes his vision ("My Sources", Glendora Review 1, no. 2 (1995): 17- 18. Accessed 17/02/2016).
The ultimate self, Orí, the embodiment and enablement of all possibility of awareness, reflection and expression, descends to the human level even as ''humans make a spiritual ascent to Orí.'' These cognitive journeys are carried out through òwe, imaginative expressions, in words, sounds or action, recreative forms, which, in speaking to questions of identity and its development, may be known as oríkì, salutations to orí (Adeyinka Bello, personal communication), orí, ''essence, attribute, and quintessence...the uniqueness of persons, animals, and things, their inner eye and ear, their sharpest point and their most alert guide as they navigate through this world and the one beyond'' ( Olabiyi Yai, Review of Abiodun et al, Yoruba: Nine Centuries, African Arts, Vol. 25, No. 1, 1992, 20+22+24+26+29.22).
Various Western and Asian conceptions resonate with the Yoruba ideas of orí, òwe, oríki,
They also include Hindu yantra theory on the multi-ontological identity of yantra, simultaneously comprising abstract form, and anthropomorphic and sonic identity, as an aspect of cosmic structure through which such fundamentals of reality may be reached (Maddhu Khana, Yantra: Tantric Symbols of Cosmic Unity, Inner Traditions, 2003). These possibilities are subsumed as Shakti, "…the primordial cosmic energy [ representing] the dynamic forces…thought to move through the universe… creative, sustaining, as well as destructive [ manifesting as] infinite forms [ but whose] true form…is unknown, and beyond human understanding…with no beginning, no ending…'' ( ''Shakti.'' Wikipedia. Accessed 2/18/2022), related to the universal idea of energy understood in an esoteric sense ("Energy (esotericism).'' Wikipedia. Accessed 2/18/2022) and correlative with the Yoruba concept of àṣẹ.
Abiodun's achievement is in highlighting and developing what Yoruba thinkers have constructed in their own distinctive idiom, their own shaping and integration of correlative ideas within the subtleties and intricacies of their own language, their own efforts at making sense of the tapestry of existence through their own imaginative genius, dramatisations of ideas through narrative that Abiodun beautifully portrays and interprets with such aesthetic sensitivity and explanatory force.
I look forward to the growth of ideas about literature in relation to or inspired by African thought and arts that demonstrate at least an equal level of speculative force, of imaginative boldness, of linguistic creativity, in any language, as Abiodun demonstrates on Yoruba thought in Yoruba Art and Language.
My Journey with Orí, Ọ̀rọ̀, Oríki,Òwe and Àṣẹ
Reflecting on questions of self and cosmos, looking into myself in seeking the convergence of these forms, in Immanuel Kant's sense of two things that amaze him the more he reflects upon them, the starry heavens above him and the moral law within him(Critique of Practical Reason,trans. Mary Gregor, Cambridge UP, 2015,129-132), exploring the depths and mountains of mind depicted by English poet Gerald Manley Hopkins ( in "No worst, there is none''), I don't necessarily think of orí when exploring myself, don't necessarily invoke ideas of orí inu, the immortal essence of self, in dialogue with orí ode, the biologically and socially constructed self.
When relating to works of art, I don't necessarily think of òwe, the Yoruba conception of imaginative forms, nor of Abiodun's extension of this idea into oríki , of such forms as ways of exploring and celebrating the essence of an entity as this unfolds or develops in space and time, expanding the conventional understanding of oríki as a form of artistic historicising. In my sensitivity to my personal creativity and that of others, I dont always call to mind the idea of àṣẹ as an individualised and yet universal expression of life force emanating from a cosmic source.
I have long reflected on and still reflect on these ideas, distilling them the way one inhales life giving air, enabling them achieve integration in my mind as air enters and nourishes the bloodstream, existing in the unifying darkness of mind where radiations from other cultures are also integrated, ideational networks derived from journeys of mind across the globe, enriching each other as part of homo sapiens' efforts to understand their journey in the largely unknown matrix of existence.
Notes
Note 1
The Context of Mystical Experience
Crowley is a Western esotericist whose ideas about the shaping of mystical experience by the mind of the experiencer, even though transcending it, is similar to those of such scholars of religion as Steven Katz, as demonstrated by his extensive Comparative Mysticism: An Anthology of Original Sources ( Oxford UP, 2013), anthologizing such shaping ideologies from mystics of different religions. This book, however, though going beyond the customary Western, Islamic and Asian references in scholarship on mysticism to include material drawn from Native American thought, has nothing on Africa.
Mysticism in African Thought, Literature and Art
Not suprising, since the understanding of the mystical character of approaches to identification with or perception of ultimate reality in African contexts is not well known, such as Mazisi Kunene on Zulu epistemology in his introduction to Anthem of the Decades, (Heinemann, 1981) pointing to the ideal of the grasp unity of existence through the integration of the particular and the universal symbolised by the calabash of totality and infinity, which I sum up in "South African Poet Mazisi Kunene on Classical Zulu Epistemology (Theory of Knowledge) and its Relationships to Metaphysics(Theory of Being)."
Others are Christopher Okigbo's adaptation of Igbo thought in relation to Mediterranean myth in Labyrinths, in which the Igbo language becomes a matrix for a quest for ''the water spirit that nurtures all creation,'' beginning from his invocation to the goddess of his village stream, to encountering the primordialities underlying existence, to union with the goddess in her cavern, a goddess, who, from a localised spiritual presence in an animistic context, becomes for him a representative of cosmic essence, unity and dynamism.
Another is Susanne Wenger, speaking from her immersion in the naturalistic universe of Yoruba cosmology, describing herself as travelling in eternity beyond time and suffering...hidden ... in...spiritual entities [representing] ''all the gods of the world [ who were ] trees and animals long, long before they [entrusted] their sacrosanct magnificence to a human figure'' (Rolf Brockmann and Gerd Hötter, Adunni: A Portrait of Susanne Wenger,Trickster Verlag, 1994).
Also significant here is Germaine Dieterlen on Fulani thought in which the natural patterns of the coats of cattle signify the unity of spatial, social and cosmological relations which become a map for the traveller into the nexus and apex of realities ( ''Initiation Among the Peul Pastoral Tribes'' in her edited, with Meyer Fortes, African Systems of Thought. Oxford UP, 1966, 314-327).
Yet another is Ahmadou Hampate Ba's complex of writings on the Fulani traditions of Kaidara, particularly his Kaidara: A Fulani Cosmological Epic from Mali (Three Continents, 1988) , a quest for the ultimate possibilities of human knowledge and wealth visualised as the convergence of contraries represented by the union of the seemingly inconsequential and the divine in the person of the itinerant Kaidara, a decrepit and dirty old man who is yet a flame from the hearth of Gueno, the Ultimate.
Kaidara's name means ''limit,'' which may represent ''the ever receding limit of the exercise of thought,'' evoking the ''pull [ of ] the mind towards new limits that keep recreating themselves every time [ one approaches that ultimacy] in its ''endlessness,'' as Ayọ̀ Adénẹ́'s summations on convergences in classical African thought may be adapted to explaining Kaidara cosmology ( Quoted sections from his Facebook post of 2/18/2022. Accessed 2/19/2022). There could be more examples of African mystical thought and literature I don't know about.
I discuss these ideas further in ''African Epistemic Metaphors : From the Mask to the Baobab : Toyin Falola and the Mystical Dimension of Knowledge'' 1, 2, 3. I am also developing mystical approaches to various African thought systems, such as the Yoruba origin Ogboni ( Developing Universal Ogboni Philosophy and Spirituality : My Journey and Ifa ( "Exploring the Mystical Potential of the Ifa Divination System";forthcoming) and ''Reworking Ifa : Self Initiation into Èṣù through Contemplation, Invocation and Prayer Inspired by the Work of Toyin Falola'' 1, 2 with addition), ''Developing the Philosophical and Mystical Possibilities of the Coronation Ceremonies of the Oba of Benin 1 : Vision and Method,''; ''The Edigin N'Use, the Oba of Benin and the Akhue Game : Naming, Identity, Transformation : Developing the Philosophical and Mystical Possibilities of the Coronation Ceremonies of the Oba of Benin 2,''; the Igbo Uli ( ''Uli Philosophy and Mysticism'' 1 and 2 );
These ideas on approaches to mysticism represent an aspiration to evaluative integration and transcendence represented by cosmic mind, in relation to the details of human knowledge and experience. The ''time bound human mind seeking to perceive eternity with the eye of God,'' as John Burnaby describes an aspect of the theology of St. Augustine of Hippo in his Encyclopedia Britannica
Note 2
Sacred Literature and Theories of Interpretation
The Bible played a central role in the emergence of hermeneutics, theory of interpretation, of which literary theory may be seen as an aspect.The application of techniques of literary study to the Bible is a later aspect of these developments, as represented, for example by Robert Alter and Frank Kermode's edited The Literary Guide to the Bible ( Harvard UP, 1990). Mohammad Salama engages related orientations in terms of Islam in The Qur'an and Modern Arabic Literary Criticism: From Taha to Nasr (Bloomsbury, 2018).
Susan Handelman is prominent in developing these understandings in the context of Jewish thought ( Fragments of Redemption: Jewish Thought and Literary Theory in Benjamin, Scholem, and Levinas ( Indiana UP, 1991); The Slayers of Moses The Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory ( SUNY, 1983).
Jornadon Ganeri explores the philosophical and spiritual significance of literary language in Indian thought and spirituality in The Concealed Art of the Soul:Theories of Self and Practices of Truth in Indian Ethics and Epistemology. Ikechukwu Aloysius Orjinta, "Hermeneutics as a Theory of Interpretation and as a Literary Theory: Hermeneutics Applied to Text, Language and African Society'' engages this field of ideas in relation to African societies ( GRIN, 2012).
Note 3
A challenge faced by Africans is that their education is conducted largely within the embrace of systems that not only have no direct relationship with their endogenous realities but represent highly abstract modes of thought, which, in trying to abstract the essences and universality of phenomena, focus largely on the intellectual plane, a style of thinking most highly developed in Western non-artistic thought.
This orientation needs to be addressed by those who wish to integrate Western and non-Western thought, in the latter's greater blend of the concrete and the abstract, as represented, for example, by Sara Allen's exploration of the role of naturalistic metaphors in classical Chinese thought, The Way of Water and the Sprouts of Virtue
( SUNY, 1997).
The environmental and human density of Nigeria's Niger Delta, for example, representative of the ecosystemic luxuriance of much of Africa, it's powerful variety of naturalistic forms, it's correlation between natural resources and humanity at different levels of human sensitivity to nature, it's demonstration of the ongoing struggle between nature's endowments and human need, greed and inhumanity to both fellow humans and nature, implies a great resource for reflection on such subjects, possibly inspiring theory correlating nature, humanity and cosmos.
Such exploration could range from the metaphysical correlates between nature's variety in unity and cosmic multiplicity and synthesis, as such thinking is described of the thought of Yoruba Ijala poetry by Wole Soyinka in Myth, Literature and the African World- "Ijala celebrates not only the deity, Ogun the hunter, but animal and plant life, the relationships of growing things and the insights of man into the secrets of the universe" ( Cambridge UP, 1990, 28)- and by Abiola Irele in "Tradition and the Yoruba Writer:D.O.Fagunwa, Amos Tutuola and Wole Soyinka" (in The African Experience in Literature and Ideology, Heinemann, 174- 196;179-181), and developed in a different manner by Ayi Kwei Armah from Akan thought in The Healers (Per Ankh, 2000), perspectives consonant with Alma Gottlieb's account of Beng forest thought, "Loggers vs Spirts in the Beng Forest,Côte d'Ivoire:Competing Models'' in Michael Sheridan and Celia Nyamweru's edited African Sacred Groves:Ecological Dynamics and Social Change ( James Currey, 2008, 149-163 ).
These investigations could also question how this intersection between multiplicity and unity may be best explored, the sensory, critical and visionary range described of Yoruba epistemology by Babatunde Lawal's " Àwòrán: Representing the Self and it's Metaphysical Other in Yoruba Art,'' (The Art Bulletin 83(3):498-526) significantly correlative with African thought generally, or purely through approaches similar to Aristotle's focus, in his Metaphysics, on ratiocinative thought, in moving from sensory perception to seeking unities underlying what is perceived by the senses? ( A quest magnificently illuminated by Jonathan Lear in Aristotle: The Desire to Understand, Cambridge UP, 1988).
What may the ecological complexity and historical challenges of the Niger Delta, for example, contribute to developing theories of aspects of existence or of existence as a whole?
What contribution could be made to theory construction in such contexts by such works as the Yoruba Ifa ecological and cosmological poem ''Ayajo Asuwada'', emphasising ''asuwa'' togetherness, as a cosmological and biological principle, as discussed by Akinsola Akiwowo in ''Contributions to the Sociology of Knowledge from an African Oral Poetry'' ( International Sociology, 1:4, 1986, 343-358) a togetherness that is yet a unity in which individuality is strategic, as represented by the Yoruba concept ''ìwà'', rendered as ''essential being'' by Abiodun in Yoruba Art and Language (245-283), an individuality empowered by' "àṣẹ '', pervasive life force imbuing each existent with unique creative capacity, as described of that idea in Drewal et al's Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought (16-26), illustrating that conception with Yoruba visual art depicting individuality in multiplicity, an idea correlative with Achebe on the Igbo concept ''ike'' in ''The Igbo World and its Art" summed up in the expression ''everyone and his own''? ( foreword to Chike Aniakor and Herbert Cole, Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos, UCLA, 1984, ix-xii, ix).
Niger Delta thought has a rich structure of ideas and practices at the convergence of nature, human activity and their abstraction in terms of symbols, as represented by Nsibidi visual, spatial and performative symbolism in it'
Cajetan Iheka's Ecological Violence, Agency, and Postcolonial Resistance in African Literature, ( Cambridge UP, 2017) partly inspired by Niger Delta history, exploring that and related issues through the lens of eco-criticism, could motivate
A revolution in approaches to theory might be needed. There might need to be a greater emphasis on the study of theory as both a creative act, an act of construction and a process of critical assimilation, shaping, deconstructing and reshaping one's own theories as well as studying the theories of others, doing this with reference to the inspirational powers of one's mind, of one's immediate and larger human, natural and technological environments, in dialogue with theory construction across a broad range of cultures.
Such creative re-orientations have already taken place in African literature and African art, and, to some degree, African philosophy, the latter exemplified, in more recent times by such work as that of Jonathan Chimakonam ( as in his Ezumezu: A System of Logic for African Philosophy and Studies, Springer, 2019; with Uchenna Ogbonnaya, African Metaphysics, Epistemology and a New Logic : A Decolonial Approach to Philosophy, 2021), as creatives in these zones construct their own universes of thought and expression, generating unique identities while also distilling value from the Western matrix. Africa centred theory, generally speaking, as cutting across disciplines, could learn from those examples.
Donation Request
I am inspired by the idea of the free sharing of knowledge that drives Compcros ,the platform that subsumes my creations, making it one of the largest, if not the largest, free access, sole written scholarly and writing platforms in the world.
You may contribute to the sustenance of this intiative by making a donation.
Also published on LinkedIn
Linked on Twitter
Comments
Post a Comment