OAA,
We shall have to agree to disagree at this point particularly since there is no universally binding authority in Ifa as a system of knowledge, including Abimbola.
The ese ifa I create fulfill the needs of those who respond appreciatively to them. Even if no one did, its not possible to delegitimize artistic or spiritual creativity simply by personal pronouncement.
Your belief that ese ifa is valid only within consultative contexts is better appreciated within significant qualifications, since ese ifa operate significantly in practice outside client-diviner consultations.
Please try and steer clear of the ad hominems, the sly attacks or I will have to avoid responding to you as I was doing before.
Such behaviour is unbecoming of a person who describes himself as a scholar, even more with your pedigree in the heyday of Nigerian university education when Great Ife was ascending towards its height, a time that seemed like myth to those of us who came much later, so grand it was, at the nexus of the Ife/Ibadan/Lagos university complex that was central to creating what is known today as African Studies, where people generated globally impactful scholarship from the critical mass concentrated in the Nigerian university system, the era of the Olubumi Sodipos, the Barry Hallens, the Pierre Vergers, of Akinsola Akiwowo, Wole Soyinka, Ade Ajayi, Takena Tamuno, Orisejolomi Thomas, Latunde Odeku, Abiola Irele, Olabiyi Yai, Wande Abimbola, when even the later luminaries Rowland Abiodun and Babatunde Lawal were beginning to find their feet enabled by the transformative intellectual culture of the then University of Ife, before the great exodus in which African Studies migrated to the US as arguably the global centre, the greatest concentration of impactful schoarship in the field.
You will observe I don't try to attack or ridicule your person. I focus on the issues.
I am very good at online attacks and insults and have even gone so far as creating a website as a vehicle in an insult match I had with someone.
I constructed a scholarly essay in connection with the same insult match,"Aquatic Ancestry" by Kingsley Nnabuagha and the Fiction of Howard Phillips Lovecraft : A Study in Imaginative Convergence,'' the essay and thread of the match of which can be seen at that link, an essay later anthologised as part of scholarship on the US master of mystical horror H.P. Lovecraft.
You will observe I don't try to attack or ridicule your person. I focus on the issues.
I am very good at online attacks and insults and have even gone so far as creating a website as a vehicle in an insult match I had with someone.
I constructed a scholarly essay in connection with the same insult match,"Aquatic Ancestry" by Kingsley Nnabuagha and the Fiction of Howard Phillips Lovecraft : A Study in Imaginative Convergence,'' the essay and thread of the match of which can be seen at that link, an essay later anthologised as part of scholarship on the US master of mystical horror H.P. Lovecraft.
I have also written about insults as a literary genre in "Insults as Verbal Art :Between the Academic and the Snake : Brexit Comedy," ''Nigerian Insult Literature: Adeyinka Olarinmoye Crafting a Journey from Cocoa House to Lhasa Fever,'' and ''The Beauty of Insults.''
These days I don't expend energy engaging in personal attacks or insults or put downs or anything that does not relate strictly to the subject in question.
I see myself as not being able to afford the time and energy.
I find irritating the behavior of people resorting to such behavior in the context of intellectual discussion and as demonstrating inadequacy to critically address the issues.
I see that style of yours as not respectful of your own person and of the pedigree you have been privileged to enjoy, specifically the Yoruba omoluabi ethos-the Yoruba ideal of human personality which includes delicate, mutually respectful social sensitivities within a culture of refined speech, amplified by the heritage of Great Ife.
If you persist in that style that is an embarrassment for your heritage, I will have to ignore those posts in which those aberrations are demonstrated.
Thanks.
Toyin
On Mon, 30 Nov 2020 at 21:28, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:
--
Digital Ifa divination without Ifa training is obviously fake irrespective of who is involved whether it is Jaap Verdjuin or Toyin Adepoju now that I have given an exposition of what is involved in genuine Ese Ifa production.
It is a disguised theft of intellectual property of the initiates So long as you use the name of Esa Ifa an extant professional name to give the practices of an extant Guild to market the product which is not the same with the actual product with respect to the method of the generation of such goods, and you refuse to attach your own name. You have taken advantage of that name to market inferior products. That is the Law!
There are thousands of such goods on the Internet and I can see why you joined the campaign of # EndSARS originally started by yahooboys who are the master minds of such methods.
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>Date: 30/11/2020 16:35 (GMT+00:00)To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Between a Spiral, aCircleandaStraight Line: How Do I Tell My Life's Story?
It's rather late to declare that what has been done cannot be done.
The new ese ifa have been created.
In fact, the theoritical and practical study of ese ifa, how to understand and construct it, enriches the cosmos of global literary study.
Questions of relationship between sacred and secular literature are fundamental at the intersection of religion and literature, the context where the ontology of ese ifa belongs, the frame in which it should be studies in comparison with other religious texts.
If ese ifa is understood as emerging from oracular inspiration, as Awo Fategbe argues, how may such inspiration be cultivated?
The construction of technically competent, artistically impressive ese ifa makes it clear that constructing ese if is not necessarily an esoteric process.
If it's argued that ese ifa is fundamentally a performative expression, actualized through relationships between diviner and client, as Noel Armherd argues and as Agbetuyi seems to be arguing on this thread, how may one develop such relationships between actors and ese ifa, so as to help use such verbal art as a problem solving, solution finding mechanism?
Are such questions answerable only from within the esoteric hermeneutics disclosed only in traditional Ifa training?
What of such innovations as those who describe themselves as doing Ifa divination without such training, represented by Jaap Verdjuin and his independent Ifa school, a divinatory process on which he has published a book and the couple who have developed a system of digital Ifa divination?
Is it possible to cultivate relationships with spiritual powers described as anchoring Ifa, using ese ifa, Ifa literature, as a means of cultivating such relationships, akin to the use of literature as an aspirational and invocational vehicle in spiritualities across the world?
Would such strategies be unique to ifa, particularly since it belongs amongst a complex of structurally and philosophically similar divination systems from Africa to Asia, from the Igbo Afa and Benin City Oguega to the Dahomean Fa and the Chinese I Ching, differing from them largely in Ifa's verbal and visual artistic scope?
Like many humanstic spiritualities, the Ifa and the Orisa tradition within which it belongs privilege the individual self as the embodiment of the self's ultimate potential, the nexus of it's interaction with cosmos.
One view holds that the core of Ifa divination is in developing a relationship with the immortal core of the self, the ultimate unifier and enabler of the self's journey through physical and spiritual space and time.
Must relationship with oneself, even at such depth, necessarily be an activity someone else, such as the Ifa diviner, must do for one?
I am developing a do-it-yourself Ifa, that actualises Ifa's potential as a method of self exploration, of the unfolding links between self and society, self and cosmos, applicable to the daily challenges of living and their integration within the larger universe of life as mission.
Nothing grows by remaining the same.
Ifa is on the move.
Great thanks for the stimulation.
--On Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 10:28 OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:
--
Toyin Adepiju:.
So Awo Fátégbè stated that Esę Ifá is an oracular Epistemology emerging from and activating spiritual realities!
Òrò bùşe ( I rest my case.)
Who gave Toyin Adepoju the power for such activation which only an Awo can undertake after years of study and tutelate under a master?. Isnt it a self- declaration that Toyin Adepoju is delivering fake goods and if prepared to charge for it guilty of fraudulent misrepresentation as the lawyers will put it. Isnt Toyin Adepoju thereby seeking to defraud the Guild of Alawo their legitimate livelihood?
Is this fair or ethical?
Anyone can learn the literary aspect of any language as you put it but is that all there is to Ese Ifa? I have said on this forum that each Ese Ifa is a unique encounter between the Awo and actual ( and not fictional) analysand bringing a problem to them to be solved and not composed out of thin air. They are not designed as exercise in literary fiction and may not be approached as such.
That Wande Abimbola attempted a poetic analysis to gain progression in the secular academy does not mean that is what they are designed for. ( He is one of the leading bona-fide generators of Ese Ifa; you are not.)
No one quarrels with your attempt to correlate. In fact I have said that I salute your effort in that regard but you must not cross the dividing line. You cannot attempt the construction of Ese Ifa. It is forbidden. It is not a game but serious business. Any attempt will be fake and fraudulent.
Also, learn more Yorùba so you translate the requisite part of your cited Ese Ifa which readers can see as part of your essay. It makes it more authentically scholarly.
May Òrúnmęlàl guide you aright!
Àşę.
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>Date: 26/11/2020 17:59 (GMT+00:00)To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Between a Spiral, a CircleandaStraight Line: How Do I Tell My Life's Story?
Thanks for all this effort devoted to my work OAA.
I enjoyed reading it.
But ese Ifa is literature, as Wande Abimbola has very well demonstrated through his books.
Being literary, it is verbalisation projected imaginatively through techniques demonstrated by Abimbola.
Anyone can learn these techniques and emulate the significatory universe of ese ifa or even adapt these zones of reference to other subjects.
Ese ifa, as Karen Barber has observed, is what may be described as an assimilative genre in Yoruba literature, integrating other genres into its varied expressions.
The issue here is not whether or not ese ifa can be emulated. It can and I have done it, and perhaps given examples here.
The question then becomes- does my emulating ese ifa expressive techniques make the outcome an example of ese ifa?
Are there other disciplinary criteria that must be satisfied to fulfill this goal?
That is the stance of Awo Fategbe in the debate we had on the thread of one pf my Facebook postings of a traditional ese ifa which I had expanded using my own words.
Fategbe admires my effort but sees it as a contribution to secular literature that does not belong within the ese ifa corpus.
He argues for ese ifa as an oracular epistemology emerging from and activating spiritual realities.
Even if one believes another person is being heretical, the only way to demonstrate that is through critical engagement with the issues involved.
That's the only way to demonstrate to others the inadequacy one sees in the person's efforts.
We honour the living ancestor Wande Abimbola, one of those who makes us possible.
I begin to identify with your angst, but its like insisting that the sea should not flow.
I am touched by your seeing my efforts as an attept ''to murder collective patrimonies and disciplines' holy grails in the name of academic freedom.''
The following is the easiest thing in the world if you know how, although my goal is correlation, not conflation-
'The writer of Upanishad was not thinking of Ifa or the Yoruba society. So how can you conflate them? Are all human societies structured the same way?''
The world's spiritualities, to put it without qualifications, useful as those are, are saying broadly the same thing, engaging the same questions and providing similar answers.
Example- the Upanishads references a small room within the self that contains the cosmos.
It is related to the famous encounter between Nachiketa and Death, in which he demands from the remorseless reaper how to escape Death.
Death explains that can happen only through a process that enables insight into the unity of the individual self and the Cosmic Self, a zone of awareness in which death does not exist.
The great ese ifa, ''The Importance of Ori'' references an aspect of the self, Ori Inu, if I am putting it precisely, the ''Inward Head'' a non-physical identity that centres the self as the physical head centres the biological self, an immortal companion that is the only deity that can follow its devotee on a distant journey without turning back, even into the journey of death, an aspect of the self that embodies the self's ultimate potential, mediating between self, cosmos and the ultimate creator.
An initiation ritual of the Western esoteric Rocicrucian order AMORC, operating from within a multicultural grounding in simar ideas, but without referencing Ifa, uses similar language in describing a similar conception of the self, known in AMORC as the Inner Self -
''No matter how far your journey may lead, you will never find a friend more loyal, more committed to serving you.''
Ghanaian Akan and Gyaman Adinkra symbolism dramatises a similar idea in a sequence of symbols, one of which is
Nyame Nwu Na M'awu
"Could Nyame [the Supreme Being] die, I would die"
A symbol that evokes the structural delicacy of a butterfly and the beautifully simple intricacy of an architectural monument in suggesting an idea resonating with the words from Death himself in the Upanishads-
"The Self is immortal. It was not born, nor does it die. It did not come out of anything, neither did anything come out of it. Even if this body is destroyed, the soul is not destroyed."
"The one who thinks that he is the slayer and the one who thinks that he is slain, both are ignorant. For the Self neither slays nor is it slain."
"Greater than the individual soul is the enveloping super consciousness, the seed of everything in the universe...the Ultimate Person than whom there is nothing greater... Once That (Supreme Self) is realized, death loses all its terrors, and the one who has realized becomes immortal.''
Such confluences represent conjunctions while recognising differences.
--On Thu, 26 Nov 2020 at 14:45, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:
--
Alagba MOA.
BH was the epitome of philosophical humility. A philosopher ( including traditional Ifa and Ogboni philosophers) take refuge in the ' tigritude' adage. For them it is a matter of inexorable mindset.
If a so- called philosopher is a braggart they have not imbibed the ethos of the pensive philosophical mind. The transformative role of philosophy on the intellect has not taken place ( I dont care what an orator, politician, architect, medical practitioner, historian or tapster says: they are not quintessential philosophers and cannot parade themselves as such. I am not one. Now I have taken interest in this particular debate because of the amorphous nature of Toyin Adepoju's work and taken the pains to save some in anticipation of occasions like this. Name dropping and association with well known people and their styles do not make one identical to them.
Being a multidisciplinary scholar does not make one an expert in all fields else we will say Falola is an expert in Literature. He knows he is not and he knows I dont regard him as such. It is not an offence. We all know he is unquestionably an expert in History. You can be a jack of many trades but be an expert in only a few because expertise takes a lot of time and in depth knowledge, time which is limited for ALL mortals.
Toyin Adepoju as he portrays himself through his essays is not an expert in any fields. He writes a bit here and adds a bit on the other one all of which are on facile level rather than pick on one or a few and do in depth study. He may yet do this some day. A scholar? Arguably so. We need to argue at which level.
He would pick up the essay work of a particular scholar on a field and concentrate on that as if that is all there is to that field rather than fully locate that work within the field after an overarching study of the whole field first. This is his stock methodologically approach to most if not all essays he has been writing. Experts would consider that a lazy approach to studying their field yet he thinks its genius. Many cannot be conflated with quality. Even if he wrote one thousand such essays they cannot equate with one in depth study of one expert. And he wants to conflate all these unrelated systems. The writer of Upanishad was not thinking of Ifa or the Yoruba society. So how can you conflate them? Are all human societies structured the same way?
He prefers to meet such experts only through their books and imposes his meanings on them even if that is counter- productive without going a step further to confirm his hunches with them if they are alive as in Nigeria( as Falola does in his interviews.) I have no qualms if it is on a single authors work particularly if the author wants him to boost their work but I take exceptions when it is done to murder collective patrimonies and disciplines' holy grails in the name of academic freedom. For me it smacks of arrogance rather than freedom.
Like I said today Philosophy editors dont have enough subscibers so they may be indulgent to what other disciplines might reject and that is the tragedy of our times. It is not for nothing that the highest degree in all disciplines is a Doctor of Philosophy. Left to me key courses in Philosophy should be made compulsory to undergraduates in all disciplines in addition to History.
If you are well grounded in Philosophy it will show in all your ancillary debates and ways of resolving issues. This is why orofessions such as Law cherish it. Engagements in debates by Toyin Adepoju do not reflect such grounding ( so much for self taught- certain things escape the attention of the mind.) They dont reflect the quality of debates by experts in Philosophy and Philosophy graduates on this forum know that. I dont care if an expert in geography argues the way he does!
Are we saying if Toyin Adepoju goes to an Ifa priest and academic like Prof. Abimbola he would subscribe to the desecration of Ifa contained in Adepoju's writings ( encouraged on this forum) such as being able to generate Esè Ifá, referring to himself as a self- initiated Ifá priest? That he wants to attempt 'universal' Ifa and Ògbóni accountable to only him as Alfa and Omega? This is where the expert versus novice dichotomy comes in and we should not turn a blind eye to people crossing the line.
He may say he wants to rework Hindu myth which no Hindu practitioner will accept from him and his editors. Good luck to them!
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------From: 'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>Date: 26/11/2020 01:49 (GMT+00:00)Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Between a Spiral, a Circle andaStraight Line: How Do I Tell My Life's Story?
Hmmm, so you were a student of Barry Hallen, Alagba OAA? So was I. Apparently, you were a part of the Ife Mafia of the 70s. Nice knowing you. Yes indeed, but even as much, if not much more than, Western Philosophy, Barry Hallen, was (and probably still is) one of the most hardworking and thoughtful philosophers of the African thought system you could ever meet. Yet, he wore humility and genius on his brows. He was the first person to define for me time and space, or a lack thereof, in the African thought system. And you are right, he recognized cultural and philosophical parallels and did not crisscross one system over the other, facts that explain why he placed credence on phenomenology (recall his famous 1976 article in Second Order).
Okay, let's leave BH alone and visit Toyin Adepoju's effort at paring distinct universes (Yoruba Ogboni, Buddhism, Gabon, French symbols, etc) and becoming an authority on the interpretation of esoteric knowledge mysteries in the caliber of the sacred institutions of Àjé, Ogboni, Ifa, etc., etc. I had wondered from the outset how and why he has been able to do this. Sadly, I have not been able to sacrifice quality time to digest the high volumes of literature he has generated over time on these subjects, which makes it unfair for someone like me to critique him. But, thankfully, you read him quite well. I appreciate his effort in generating all this information day in, day out, and yours as well in reading them. My request is this: Since you have read and seem to understand Toyin Adepoju, and his work on Ogboni, the subject of which he said ". . . has flowered into a significant body of theory and practice . . .", could you please provide me a two-paragraph summary of the work? It sounds like some intellectual laziness on my part, but I truly crave a genuine desire to understand. There has to be something, or some things, in this relentless labyrinth of information. It cannot just be much-ado about nothing. God forbid!
Thanks in no small way!
MOA
===
--On Wednesday, November 25, 2020, 9:19:06 PM GMT+1, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:
--Toyin Adepoju:
I learn from anyone and everyone both my in- class students and my professors and mentors. I learn from my adult students even as at today. I was discussing with my half Igbo/ half Yorùbá young adult graduate learner during the weekend ( early 20s) and its quite rewarding what she reconfirmed as the Biafran War causes which 60 something plus neo- Biafrans on our listserv pretend not to know about the causes.
But in recognised fields and disciplines I learn from the masters. That is the only way quackery will not be passed on as expertise. This is how and why formal education thrives. In literary translation we call it authority bestowed.
You cannot, being no graduate of Ifá' transform Ifá to what is not acceptable to Ifá authority and pass it on. That is recognised as disguised fraud. The same goes for Ògbóni.
Look at it this way: All the foreign universities in which you claimed you learned, if you told them you only picked up the University of Benin prospectus and course offerings and read up all the itemised book listing as a result of which you thought you had knowledge of a university graduate and call yourself a BA holder ( having not attended the university and passed the required courses) from that same university would they not describe you as a fraudster and deny you admission for graduate studies?
Why do you choose to rate Ifá lnstitution and Ògbóni institution so low you can ride roughshod over them while pretending to do the Yorùbá a ' favour' by helping to spread their civilization? The Yoruba dont need such favours.
I refer you to one of my own philosophical mentors ( who gave me perhaps the greatest grounding in western philosoohy) Barry Hallen who for decades have done what you began within the last few years when we saw you groping in the dark unable to come to terms with or decide on what to do with your sudden premature return to Nigeria.
Barry Hallen worked closely with our HOD (late) Olubi Sodipo to understand and push the boundaries of Yoruba philosophy. He understood he could not impose Western philisoohy on Yoruba philosoohy; he understood you could not merge the two as you attempt to do. He knew he could not independently rework anything or construct ' 'universal' version of anything single- handedly. He is basically a honest man in search if no cheap pseudo heroism. This is why we accept him as a true master of philosophy.
You can see how far Nimi Wariboko has gone, coming home ( more on him later) and you can see how austere he is; not pontificating everywhere and not misallocating precious time to be spent on rigorous research, web-site- crawling looking for sensationalisms.
Where did he describe himself as genius?.....I scratch my head now because I cannot recollect...
OAA
Mr. President you took an oath to rule according to the Constitution.
Where are the schools to promote the teaching of the country's lingua francas?
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>Date: 25/11/2020 17:42 (GMT+00:00)To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Between a Spiral, a Circle andaStraight Line: How Do I Tell My Life's Story?
😎😀🙄🎼🔭🍷🌐♨🌉🔥🏇
Contemplative presences from the Yoruba origin Ogboni, bottom left, Buddhism, top left, Gabon, middle,
and self portrait by French artist Paul Gauguin, bottom left.
Collage by myself
My brother Agbetuyi,
You could not have been more helpful to me than if we were collaborators.
I can be reasonably certain that you will read any composition of mine posted on this forum.
I can also be sure that your reading will pick out strategic issues that would benefit from being further clarified and elaborated upon, which you will often take pains to point out.
If not for your challenges in particular, I wonder if I would have composed my comprehensive essay on AMORC, nor the elaboration of my work on Ogboni that has flowered into a significant body of theory and practice.
You also raised some vital questions on the logic of correlating cognitive systems in my earlier post about ''The Adepoju System of Initiation into African, Asian and Western Philosophies and Spiritualities,'' questions I would have loved to answer, elaborations that would be priceless for my work, issues raised by you as insightful as if you were a critically acute book or journal editor assessing a paper.
Your latest challenges on my description of my biography are also insightful.
My only problem with your engagement is the determined hostility that the work of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju seems to inspire in you, leading to the cloaking of critical insight in vitriol, the muddying of discourse in insults, the ad hominems that spoil what would otherwise have been beautiful debate.
I get the impression that you are challenged by what seems to be the egocentric persona of Adepoju, presuming to rework such ancient systems of your ethnic ancestors as Ifa, moving into even the ultimate Yoruba origin esoterica represented by Ogboni, and now claiming to be able to have something strategic to say about other African and even Asian and Western systems and even adding the hallowed name of Immanuel Kant to the mix.
You just have to accept this reality.
Is there any debate we have been in in which I have not demonstrated that I am adequately informed on the subject?
I would love you to refine your style of engagement with me so learning may develop that could benefit you, myself and others.
If one has not spent every day of decades in meditation for hours, not spent hours across years meditating alone in a forest, not engaged in various spiritual practices from across the world, not studied systems of knowledge across cultures, is one in a position to begrudge others who are doing so and demonstrating the fruits of their efforts?
The best one can do is engage them respectfully, learning from them as they learn from one.
One may also map a scope of achievement representing the maximizing one's potential and pursue that scope.
On account of the depth and scope of my exposure to various spiritual and philosophical systems, I am able to readily rework any spiritual system I am interested in or even create new ones.
Yet, these are ultimately exercises that fall short of the ultimate goal, that which cannot be systematised, the goal of knowledge that comes to itself with the incomprehensible One, as the Christian theologian Karl Rahner puts it, that which is best represented by silence, by pregnant non-speech, as Buddhist apophatic spirituality sees it, palpitations from beyond time and space yet sensed within the spatio-temporal coordinates of the self.
Thus, within the variousness of one's journeyings, one is aware of one's cognitive poverty.
The impossibility of unifying all of being, an insight described of Aristotle by one scholar, all I have learnt seeming like grass in the face of the Beyond revealed to me, as attributed to Thomas Aquinas, the ocean of truth lying undiscovered before me as I pick pebbles by the seashore, at times finding one shinier than the others, as famously credited to Isaac Newton, the glorious books I had written to mirror the world now revealed to me as no more than an addition to the world, as described of one of his characters by Jorge Louis Borges...
Yet, beyond such questions at the very edges of possibility is the fact that intellectual and spiritual capacity are not equivalent to the skills required to manage life in society, and the intense pursuit of abstract cognitions is not always compatible with managing social possibilities...
Yet, within such cognitive pursuits, how much can one really know?
Are the horizons of learning not endless, ever receding, a skyline that can never be reached?
Is one therefore different from the ragged, decrepit man, who is yet a beam of light from the hearth of Gueno, the Ultimate, an ultimacy closer to the human being than his jugular vein, as the Koran puts it, an ultimacy close yet distant, revealing itself only when it wishes, even when sought for across a lifetime, as described of Kaidara of the Fulani by Ahmadou Hampate Ba?
I salute you.
toyin
--On Wed, 25 Nov 2020 at 14:49, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:
--
But the 'foundational education' of Vincent Oluwatoyin Adepoju is not self generated studying under an adept Babalawo', is it? If so, our reactions would have been different
Encounter with a Babalawo by his own admission is very recent, after the events of formal education which he now misrepresents as only complementary to life long self- education, was terminated.
This seems a made up story. Studying under Babalawo takes years of commitments before one graduates to be on their own, which the referent is unwilling to undergo, yet is eager to misrepresent as having accomplished, as he makes up things as he goes.
Intellectual honesty is the bedrock of the virtues of scholarship.
Formal education was terminated overseas at the behest of the host country. This is not unheard of.
Parallel educational institutions abound in his own country and he has forgotten he narrated an aborted attempt at continuity with Professor Ademola Dasylva.
Why take to the internet to weave a self- confusing tale of heroism?
Approaching independent scholarship through a different route has been genuinely successful by others who are forthright, and who acknowledged those to whom they are beholden, with their expressly sought and given authority (and not skirting round avoidance of such acknowledgement in thinly disguised plagiarisms.)
OAA
Mr President, you took an oath to rule according to the Constitution.
Where are the schools to promote the teaching of the country's lingua francas?
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>Date: 25/11/2020 07:19 (GMT+00:00)To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>, WoleSoyinkaSociety <WoleSoyinkaSociety@yahoogroups.com>Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Between a Spiral, a Circle and aStraight Line: How Do I Tell My Life's Story?
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--Between a Spiral, a Circle and a Straight Line
How Do I Tell My Life's Story?
Oluwatoyin Vincent AdepojuCompcrosComparative Cognitive Processes and Systems"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
A scholar's biography is often an account of a linear progression, a movement from one level of schooling to another, from one academic job to another based on the kind of schooling received, their publications mapping cumulative contributions to knowledge over the years.
But what if the scholar's foundational educational development is self generated, with the academic training being complementary yet formative, the academic and the self generated education enhanced by learning within a classical African educational system, studying with a babalawo, an adept of the Yoruba origin Ifa system of knowledge?
Instead of a forward movement across academic systems, this scholar's journey is marked by recurrent dropping out of that system, returning to the self education that is his deepest orientation.
How may the pain and confusion represented by those journeys be distilled, anguish emerging from trying to be what is different from one's deepest self but which is the norm one has been socialized to try to adapt to?
Scholars' biographies often highlight their publications in academic fora, but the work of the scholar in question, though also evident in academic platforms, is more represented by self publication in social media and other online platforms, taking a path he finds congenial, and possibly gradually working his way towards developing his own knowledge network, consisting of his own publications and perhaps those of others, the platforms he uses in presenting these and the social media groups he has created under the inspiration of his guiding interests.
Reworker of classical African knowledge systems, Ifa, Ogboni, Ekpe and Olokun, writer in female centred aesthetics, explorer of intersections between the visual and verbal arts, philosophy, spirituality and science, worker in comparative cognitive processes and systems, are how I describe myself as I survey what I am doing, creativity that is more impulsive than planned, its configurations understood only after they have emerged under the compulsion of the daemon that is my true nature, slave master and inspirer, a nature partly understood by myself, a force outside the boundaries of social integration and biological imperatives, a consuming fire.
To what degree is my life's story a spiral, returning to the same orientations suppressed by the drive to adapt to expectations, developing them at deeper levels partly enabled by the synergy between my self developed skills and the skills gained from the social systems I struggled to adapt to?
To what degree is my life's story a circle, seeking an ultimate centre of knowledge, beyond space, time and biology but integrative of them, the pursuit of which I struggle to actualize in a circle of activity unique to myself, the tension between this quest for uniqueness and the pull towards social adaptation being the story of my learning journeys up till now?
How far is the image of the straight line relevant here?
A line of aspiration, luminous through various detours, flaming under the activities one did not want to engage in but was compelled to so as be part of how things are conventionally done, the insistent voice that cannot be denied no matter how painful it is to be guided by it.
Is it possible to be possessed by a demon of knowledge?
A force that has no interest in the well being of its host, something whose drives have no relation to human biological or social interests?
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju is a writer at the boundary of a quest for ultimate meaning and a world centred in more immediate values, a tension that has been the matrix of his life in search for structures of knowledge with which to engage this ultimacy, from various religions and philosophies to the visual and verbal arts, integrated within undergraduate and graduate studies in English and Comparative Literature from the Universities of Benin, Kent, SOAS and UCL, a quest presently constituted by reworking classical African systems of knowledge in terms of vehicles for the search for the core of what is and how best to live.
Written under the inspiration of being asked to submit my biography for the book on the scholar Nimi Wariboko to which I contributed.
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