Abolaji Adekeye,
Many thanks. I may disagree with you but I will defend your right to say whatever pleases you.
Please feel free to embrace and critique Toyin Adepoju's academic writings. I am sure you will find him stimulating and fresh. As for me and the little I have read from him, he is an academic fraud.
I hope you will be kind enough to share with us here your glowing critique of his many brilliant works.
Cheers.
IBK
On 21 Apr 2015 17:05, "Abolaji Adekeye" <blargeo.dekeye@gmail.com> wrote:
-- Ibk,
You sir are guilty of acting like an intellectual Torquemada.
Toyin's politics should not blind you to his humanity. I feel really
ashamed reading your vituperation. Yeah vituperation because the
caustic piece is no critique. It has no intellectual value.
I do not agree with Toyin's politics too but that is his prerogative.
Thanks.
On 4/21/15, Ibukunolu A Babajide <ibk2005@gmail.com> wrote:
> CAO,
>
> The boy Toyin is a failed academic seeking relevance on the pages of the
> Internet. I initially gave him the benefit of the doubt and read him and
> his interventions only to discover a shallow and conflicted person whose
> intellect was at best pedestrian.
>
> All thanks to your forceful libertarian preachments here that denied me
> the guillotine of censorship! You should be proud and happy I am not
> decapitated prematurely.
>
> You offer a platform for poetry and prose to escape the restrictions of
> self seeking censors of thought and gatekeepers and from day one I embraced
> you and you are yet to disappoint me. Sadly, Toyin Adepoju is an
> unmitigated disaster and a monumental failure.
>
> Cheers.
>
> IBK
> On 20 Apr 2015 20:53, "Chidi Anthony Opara" <chidi.opara@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> IBK,
>> I wonder how you guys make it pass moderation. What have supporting
>> Jonathan got to do with this? You have already assessed him and returned
>> a
>> negative verdict, why advise him again to "go to a proper school and be
>> assessed by your peers and win their respect". Haba!
>>
>> I hope this gets pass moderation.
>>
>> CAO.
>>
>> On Monday, 20 April 2015 13:06:10 UTC+1, ibk wrote:
>>>
>>> Toyin,
>>>
>>> Stop your fake Internet academic pursuits. Go to a proper school and be
>>> assessed by your peers and win their respect.
>>>
>>> You supported a corrupt Jonathan and you think you can easily morph into
>>> the background and spread your failure in academics?
>>>
>>> I suspected you from the beginning when your appreciation of Ifa Olokun
>>> asorodayo was so warped and wrong. Over time you proved that you have no
>>> intellectual depth and you lacked moral fibre. You bear Yoruba names but
>>> hate everything Yoruba. You are conceited and conflicted.
>>>
>>> Go to a proper school and stop peddling half baked pseudo academic
>>> nonsense on the Internet.
>>>
>>> A word is enough for the wise but you are not wise.
>>>
>>> Cheers.
>>>
>>> IBK
>>> On 20 Apr 2015 12:02, "Oluwatoyin Adepoju" <toyind...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *
>>>> Wole Soyinka's Art as a Psychological, Spiritual and Philosophical
>>>> Resource
>>>> *
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
>>>>
>>>> Compcros <http://danteadinkra.wix.com/compcros>
>>>>
>>>> Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
>>>>
>>>> "Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Some of the greatest contributors to spirituality and religion from
>>>> Africa or in relation to African cultures are artists.
>>>>
>>>> I refer to artists operating outside the generally recognized contexts
>>>> of spiritual and philosophical activity.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *A Multi-Cultural Contextualization *
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> * Dante Alighieri and Matsuo Basho*
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The contributions of these creative people to spirituality and
>>>> philosophy outside conventionally recognized channels also emerges in
>>>> other
>>>> cultures, two of the most striking examples of this being the Italian
>>>> poet
>>>> Dante Alighieri and the Japanese poet Matsuo Basho.
>>>>
>>>> * Dante Alighieri *
>>>>
>>>> Dante's epic poem the *Divine Comedy*
>>>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Comedy> (1308-1320) is the
>>>> greatest known demonstration of the convergence of Christianity,
>>>> philosophy, politics, literature and the other arts within the context
>>>> of
>>>> observations of everyday human experience.
>>>>
>>>> It represents Western civilisation's integration of these pillars of
>>>> its cultural identity, a value that continues to resonate centuries
>>>> after
>>>> the creation of this work in medieval Europe.
>>>>
>>>> The greatness of the poem is demonstrated by the fact that the
>>>> limitations attendant upon the work's temporal emergence are superseded
>>>> by
>>>> its imaginative and ideational range, as demonstrated by the variety
>>>> of
>>>> Dante interpretations and recastings that continue till the present
>>>> day.
>>>>
>>>> The expanding scope of these interpretations and representations of
>>>> Dante are actualised, for example, by Allison Milbank's description of
>>>> Christian Moev's *The Metaphysics of Dante's Comedy* (2005) as a
>>>> "contemporary interpretation of [Dante's] poetics that goes so far as
>>>> to
>>>> seek analogies with the understanding of space-time in modern
>>>> quantum-physics" in his review of the book in *Religion and
>>>> Literature*,
>>>> Vol.38. No.2. 2006.117-119.
>>>>
>>>> Sandow Birk and Marcus Sanders' translate the Comedy ( 2004) in
>>>> colloquial modern English, with illustrations setting the work in the
>>>> contemporary Western context.
>>>>
>>>> The exhibition
>>>> <http://www.scadmoa.org/art/2014/divine-comedy-heaven-purgatory-hell-african-artists>
>>>> and accompanying book
>>>> <http://www.amazon.com/The-Divine-Comedy-Purgatory-Contemporary/dp/3866789319>
>>>> "The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory and Hell Revisited by
>>>> Contemporary
>>>> African Artists"(2014-2015), is described as going beyond the
>>>> inspiration
>>>> of "Dante's literary works and metaphorical language for [Western
>>>> visual
>>>> visual artists having inspired] European masterpieces by Sandro
>>>> Botticelli, Eugène Delacroix, William Blake and Auguste Rodin, among
>>>> many
>>>> others [ to demonstrating through a variety of media] how concepts
>>>> visited
>>>> in Dante's poem transcend Western traditions and resonate with diverse
>>>> contemporary cultures, belief systems and political issues [ providing]
>>>> a
>>>> probing examination of life, death and the continued power of art to
>>>> express the unspoken and intangible".
>>>>
>>>> * Matsuo Basho*
>>>>
>>>> Matsuo Basho's poetry is a quintessential expression of the confluence
>>>> of the temporal and the timeless, space and infinity that characterizes
>>>> Zen
>>>> Buddhism as a style of attention to relationships between inner and
>>>> outer
>>>> worlds enabling insight into points of intersection of self and
>>>> cosmos.
>>>>
>>>> Even in a world where mechanized locomotion is ubiquitous, Basho's
>>>> signature poetry and prose collection,*Oku no Hosomichi *
>>>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oku_no_Hosomichi>(late 17th century) ,
>>>> translated as *The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel
>>>> Sketches*, his account of a long and difficult journey made on foot,
>>>> continues to inspire people with its image of life as a journey, and
>>>> the
>>>> moments and progression of the journey as points of intersection with
>>>> the
>>>> infinite, as gloriously summed up in Donald Keene's translation of its
>>>> famous opening lines :
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> "The months and days are the travellers of eternity. The years that
>>>> come
>>>> and go are also voyagers. Those who float away their lives on ships or
>>>> who
>>>> grow old leading horses are forever journeying, and their homes are
>>>> wherever their travels take them. Many of the men of old died on the
>>>> road,
>>>> and I too for years past have been stirred by the sight of a solitary
>>>> cloud
>>>> drifting with the wind to ceaseless thoughts of roaming."
>>>>
>>>> Complementing this famous work are Basho's other writings exemplified
>>>> by his famous haiku, a poetic form from Japan which may be described
>>>> as
>>>> minimalist poetry capturing an eternal value in a fleeting moment, of a
>>>> frog breaking the silence of an ancient pond by jumping into the water,
>>>> a
>>>> supreme evocation of the principle of immersion in the moment in order
>>>> to
>>>> reach the eternal that is central to Zen Buddhism and its effect on
>>>> such
>>>> Japanese arts as gardening, the tea ceremony, archery, and within and
>>>> beyond Japan, the martial arts.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> * Ibn Arabi, Jalal ud-din Rumi, the Baal Shem Tov and the
>>>> Africanist Achievement *
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Writers like Dante and Basho bring alive the creative potential of
>>>> particular philosophical and spiritual values and traditions in ways
>>>> outside the context of their official expression.
>>>>
>>>> They thereby demonstrate the vitality of these cultures as ways of
>>>> responding to the challenge of being human that transcend while taking
>>>> advantage of those larger bodies of expression from which they draw
>>>> inspiration.
>>>>
>>>> Some other writers are able to demonstrate both individuality of
>>>> transposition of the official world view represented by a spirituality
>>>> while gaining acceptance as part of the broader canon outside the
>>>> scriptures of those traditions, such as Ibn Arabi and Jalal ud-din Rumi
>>>> in
>>>> Islam, Rumi's poetry collection the *Mathnawi* being described as "the
>>>> Koran in Persian" and Ibn Arabi's poetry and prose long established
>>>> as
>>>> cornerstones of Islamic theology, philosophy and mysticism, and the
>>>> Baal
>>>> Shem Tov, whose stories are canonical in the Hasidic school of Judaism.
>>>>
>>>> A number of writers and visual artists whose inspiration derives from
>>>> classical African spiritualities and philosophies as well as writers,
>>>> from
>>>> and beyond Africa whose work relates to but challenges or problematises
>>>> established philosophical and spiritual cultures need to be better
>>>> appreciated as central to the cultures to which their work relates as
>>>> strategies of thought and action others may take advantage of, not
>>>> simply
>>>> as sources of enjoyment, appreciation and study but as methods of
>>>> engaging
>>>> with questions of ultimate meaning and the reshaping of the human mind
>>>> through contemplation, ritual and larger forms of action.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> * Africanist Writers and Artists *
>>>>
>>>> One of such Africanist artists is the writer Wole Soyinka.
>>>>
>>>> Others are the writers Christopher Okigbo, Chinua Achebe, Ayi Kwei
>>>> Armah, Mazisi Kunene, Bessie Head and Susanne Wenger and the visual
>>>> artists
>>>> Victor Ekpuk, Bruce Onabrakpeya, Ayoola Gbolahan, Nyornuwofia Agorsor,
>>>> Belkis Alyon, Joseph Eze, Owusu-Ankomah, and the sculptural and
>>>> architectural school of Susanne Wenger, these being those I am informed
>>>> about.
>>>>
>>>> Each of these creators or schools, is saying something unique,
>>>> developing novel philosophical or/and spiritual possibilities.
>>>>
>>>> By "philosophical", in this context, I refer to rationalistic
>>>> explorations of meaning, like Ayi Kwei Armah's depiction of a philosophy
>>>> of
>>>> nature inspired by Akan thought in the conversation between Damfo and
>>>> Densu
>>>> in his novel
>>>>
>>>> *The Healers.* By "spiritual", I refer to ideas and practices centred
>>>> in non-rationalistic explorations of meaning, such as Christopher
>>>> Okigbo's
>>>> mystical sequence, built on Igbo spirituality, in his poetic cycle
>>>> *Labyrinths.*
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> * Wole Soyinka*
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> * Meditation on Emptiness : *
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *The Credo of Being and Nothingness*
>>>> Wole Soyinka, for example, creates marvelous contemplative and ritual
>>>> scenarios that may be adapted for use beyond identification with any
>>>> belief
>>>> system.
>>>>
>>>> A key expression of this is the meditation he describes in the
>>>> beginning
>>>> of *The* *Credo of Being and Nothingness*, which involves imagining
>>>> oneself at the state before the emergence of existence.
>>>>
>>>> This meditation is rich as a means of reaching the foundations of the
>>>> mind in detachment from the complex of ideas, emotions, attitudes and
>>>> impressions that constitute one's personality, the aggregate of one's
>>>> encounter with the world across time and space.
>>>>
>>>> One thereby engages with oneself as an identity distinct from but
>>>> related to this existential complex, suggesting the possibility of
>>>> reshaping one's attitudes from this centre of direction.
>>>>
>>>> This meditation is also useful as a means of reflection on ideas about
>>>> the origin of existence, particular those ideas centred in the idea of
>>>> emptiness as a primary state before the emergence of being, such as the
>>>> Judaeo-Christian conception of the "darkness upon the face of the
>>>> waters"
>>>> when "the earth [was] without form and void", the Buddhist idea of
>>>> *sunyata*, the Void, the possibility beyond conception that enables
>>>> being, the Jewish Kabbalistic idea of Ain Soph, the Umanifest so called
>>>> becauase it is not expressed even in terms of the most abstract
>>>> concepts
>>>> yet is the source of existence, and the scientific cosmological notion
>>>> of
>>>> the cosmos emerging from Nothing, as presented with particularly beauty
>>>> of
>>>> logic in Tian Yu Cao's "Ontology and Scientific Explanation" in
>>>> *Explanation*, edited by John Conwell.
>>>>
>>>> Soyinka describe his meditation on emptiness as a childhood pursuit
>>>> carried out without knowledge of its relationship to philosophy and
>>>> spirituality.
>>>>
>>>> His use of the same or similar ideas in other contexts expands its
>>>> possibilities of understanding and adaptation by others.
>>>>
>>>> It is central to some of the most powerful passages in his prison
>>>> autobiography *The Man Died *as he describes himself as exploring
>>>> primordial voidness through contemplation and through its metaphorical
>>>> expression even in such seemingly mundane forms as a blank sheet of
>>>> paper
>>>> the emptiness of its surface potent with limitless possibilities of
>>>> expression its empty surface enables.
>>>>
>>>> It demonstrates an associative relationship with one of his central
>>>> concepts, the Abyss of Transition, which may be understood as the
>>>> process
>>>> of moving between life, death and rebirth, distilled from classical
>>>> Yoruba
>>>> philosophy of the human life cycle in a cosmic context.
>>>>
>>>> It may be related to the Abyss of Transition as dramatised in the
>>>> magnificent ritual core of his play *Death and the King's Horseman,* in
>>>> the play's dramatization of a process of moving from life into the realm
>>>> of
>>>> death, enabling communion with the ancestors, in relation to the birth
>>>> of
>>>> new biological life.
>>>>
>>>> One may see in these parallels a possible distillation from Soyinka's
>>>> personal childhood orientation, in relation to his immersion in
>>>> classical
>>>> Yoruba spirituality and philosophy, of an idea that may be enriched by
>>>> Yoruba thought and practice but which goes beyond it and may be adapted
>>>> as
>>>> contemplative and ritual practice even outside identification with
>>>> related
>>>> ideas from that culture.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> * Death Ritual : Death and the King's Horseman*
>>>>
>>>> This adaptive possibility may be demonstrated with reference to the
>>>> ritual at the centre of *Death and the King's Horseman*.
>>>>
>>>> The ritual is a dance, accompanied by poetry expressed by the dancer,
>>>> Elesin Alafin and the drummer and ceremonial poet, Oluhun Iyo, meant to
>>>> enable the Elesin detach his mind from his body and pass voluntarily
>>>> into
>>>> death.
>>>>
>>>> The ritual is a great expression of a classic motif in religious and
>>>> secular literature- the visualization of a journey into the world of
>>>> the
>>>> dead which constitutes central aspects of some of the world's greatest
>>>> literature, the *Egyptian Book of the Dead*, the *Tibetan Book of the
>>>> Dead*, Homer's *Odyssey*, Virgil's *Aeneid*, Dante's *Divine Comedy*,
>>>> and the remarkable underworld sequence in *Darke *by Angie Sage, among
>>>> others.
>>>>
>>>> Some of these works, particularly those operating within an explicitly
>>>> religious context, such as the *Egyptian Book of the Dead* and the
>>>> *Tibetan
>>>> Book of the Dead*,may be understood as contemplative maps enabling
>>>> dissociation from life as it is known in order to explore ideas about
>>>> existence beyond life, and perhaps, even the possibility of engaging
>>>> with
>>>> such existence.
>>>>
>>>> The rhythm of imagery and verbal music in the ritual centre of *Death
>>>> and the King's Horseman *enables a superb contemplative motion from
>>>> the grounding of one's mind in one's awareness of one's body as part of
>>>> the
>>>> physical world to another centre of awareness, removed from a focus on
>>>> one's one physical embodiment.
>>>>
>>>> This withdrawal from physically centred consciousness may be combined
>>>> with a gradual reversal of the contemplative ritual in terms of a return
>>>> to
>>>> one's awareness of one's embodied self.
>>>>
>>>> What could be the value of such an exercise?
>>>>
>>>> It could facilitate appreciation of the scope of consciousness, of its
>>>> elasticity, and perhaps lead to states of consciousness from which
>>>> knowledge could be gained that might not be readily accessible otherwise
>>>> or
>>>> even accessible except through such means.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> * Nature Centred and Abstract Meditations and
>>>> Invocations : A Shuttle in the Crypt*
>>>>
>>>> Other examples of contemplative and ritual activity that may be adapted
>>>> from Soyinka's works are the meditations in his poetry collection *A
>>>> Shuttle in the Crypt*, depicting the contemplative and ritual activity
>>>> through which he sustained himself while in prison during the Nigerian
>>>> Civil War.
>>>>
>>>> These include the opening poem "O Roots" in which he imagines himself
>>>> drawing power from the earth as he encounters inspiring brethren of
>>>> similar
>>>> aspiration through a contemplative plunge described as an immersion in
>>>> "pools of silence", a conflation of aquatic imagery and contemplative
>>>> action which may be adapted in meditation employing Soyinka's imagery
>>>> of
>>>> roots drawing sustaining energy from the earth, and his imagery of
>>>> empowering flows of water.
>>>>
>>>> Soyinka's visualization of himself as withdrawing within the flames of
>>>> his heart as he invokes helpers on beams of light while he chants an
>>>> incantation of resolve to vanquish his destructive circumstances is
>>>> another
>>>> poem is rich in visual imagery and verbal action within a contemplative
>>>> ritual context which may be profitably adapted for use particularly in
>>>> trying situations.
>>>>
>>>> Some other poems in the collection are more abstract in vision, yet
>>>> suggest possibilities of contemplative exploration of most adventurous
>>>> concepts, such as the delightfully oxymoronic "barrier of immanence".
>>>>
>>>> Some project the poet in terms of or in relation to other forms of
>>>> being, such as a bird winging its way to a rendezvous at the beginning
>>>> of
>>>> time or watching a flight of egrets seeming to him like a choir
>>>> participating in the sacred transmutation of matter into spirit
>>>> represented
>>>> by the Christian Mass as centred on the solemnity of the setting sun.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *Building a Soyinka Centred Contemplative, Ritual and Philosophical
>>>> System *
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> It should be possible to develop a Soyinka centred contemplative and
>>>> ritual discipline, perhaps related to rationalistic explorations of
>>>> philosophical questions.
>>>>
>>>> These could be correlated with Soyinka's explorations of classical
>>>> Yoruba philosophy and spirituality in the spirit of his richly
>>>> concise,
>>>> simple yet luminous depiction of Yoruba orisa or deities and cosmology
>>>> in
>>>> terms of sublime philosophical concepts in the seven stanza poem that
>>>> concludes *A Credo of Being and Nothingness*.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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>>>>
>>> --
>> Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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>> USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
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>>
>
> --
> Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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--
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