uncomfortable but fecund
opposing binary opposition
oscillating between spheres of knowledge
between
economics and ethics
economics and religion
economics and philosophy
ethics and theology
philosophy and theology
social history and ethics
social sciences and theology
and present and not-yet-present knowledges
where my soul finds deep peace
wrestling in a contact zone of disciplines that is neither/ nor
the fragile, fleeting, and slippery para-site of erotic, new, refreshing insights and lights
the uncanny non-place
birthing the underivably new in history
the frontier, the edge of knowledge that is always approaching and withdrawing approach.
my teachers, past and present
on the distant sound of the footsteps of coming generations
whose coming is expected
and whose joy
in inheriting and encountering works and ideas left for them by their own deeply excites me.
I call upon you in the name of the inspiration I receive from the generations
who came before me
who are with me
and who will come after me, the not-yet born, they whose coming is expected.
I call upon you in the name of this collective of power
the totality the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.
I call upon you in the name of my joy
that you
my brothers and sisters
my children
who have been
who are
and who will be
committed to the quest for truth rooted in the public intercourse of rigorous ideas
carrying forward current intellectual questions and debates
challenging the ideas bequeathed to you
as I salute your accomplishments of this task transmitted by scholarship.
I thank you all for your forbearance and guidance in walking and working with me in this unhomely space
the furtive search in the darkness for the loose end of Being's fabric
unwrapping its hidden breach of novum and thymos
the womblike chaos of the creative process.
Slightly adapted from "Acknowledgements" in The Split God: Pentecostalism and Critical Theory ( 2018) by Nimi Wariboko and the last three lines from page 170 of The Pentecostal Principle : Ethical Methodology in New Spirit (2011) by the same writer.
The Kalabari understand imagination as a unique primordial quality of human nature, the means through which people represent to themselves the way in which a general or universal concept can apply to what is experienced. Through it people also explore the significance of their lived experiences. At its invisible depths, it is understood as a point of contact between the divine and human life, enabling the connection between upper and lower case So, the universe of possibilities from which some are defined as available to persons and institutions and others remain either unfulfilled or simply the set of possibilities from which they are excluded at any given time. Uppercase So is one dimension of God, the other being Teme-órú. Lowercase so is the ideal the individual receives from God and works out within history, actualized by the way he or she transforms the pure possibilities given to him or her into realizable possibilities under the conditions of existence.
The idea of God's directing activity being present in each person or collection of persons—as indicated by the attachment of lowercase so to person or groups—suggests that every person or group incarnates some degree of God's purpose in the world.
The excellent self is the one who has fully realized his or her particular divine aim with little or no distortion, or is in search of the maximum potential in his or her historical circumstances.
Since every individual so is a subset of the universal So, consisting of multiple images of upper-case So, the set of all possibilities on earth, each person bears an image of Divinity. Working out one's fiyeteboye, the course of one's life, thus means deliberately seeking out the universal in the particular and the particular in the universal, bringing forth possibilities through the reconciliation of the tensions between conscious and unconscious, finite and infinite, freedom and necessity.
Imagination is thus the capability to see through worlds or objects and to comprehend things or powers beyond them, supplying hints of infinity, immortality, the deep interconnectedness of being, and its inexpressible significance, converting every object or experience into symbols or potential symbols. Imagination is the sense that there is always something more (jenso ani bio emi). This jenso ani bio emi (this "more"), this imaginative understanding, is to perceive the universal in the particular, the timeless in the temporal. This "something more" is the longing for the infinite.
Slightly adapted from Ethics and Time : Ethos of Temporal Orientation in Politics and Religion of the Niger Delta ( 2010) by Nimi Wariboko.
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