Is that too much to ask?
I question how a person who is not a scholar, who does not publish in any field, talk less Yoruba thought, the field in question, in other words, such a person as yourself, can determine who should be a scholar in any field, talk less in Yoruba thought?
Is that question not reasonable?
Thats why we are all here. To help each other. This is not your domestic space in which you do what you like with yourself and get others to homour you. Thats why even though you are not an academic as you used to claim to be, using that claim as a platform for ego inflation, even though there is no evidence you are a scholar, you are here hanging out with academics and scholars. You desire to belong.
But you must learn how to engage. Scholarship is not about boasting or ego inflation. It is about work, work, work. Creativity. Productivity.
Claiming to have this or that work unseen by the world in your house, boasting about your education, losing direction in debates by refusing to focus on issues, is not scholarship.
Learn from Adepoju's work ethic. If a reckoning is to be made today of contributors to Yoruba thought, would you be counted? No, because you have nothing to be counted.
Yet, Adepoju, whom you should be learning from, stands as a major contributor to the field even before his 2011 comprehensive essay on 'Ifa/Odu', his essay on 'Orisa' and his essay on 'Ori,' strategic aspects of Yoruba cognitive systems, spirituality and philosophy, in the Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought, edited by Abiola Irele and Biodun Jeyifo, doyens of African scholarship,.
Should we add his groundbreaking essay demonstrating the universal applicability of Ifa divination as a hermeneutic strategy even beyond Africana thought and culture in his explication of the art and letters of the Duch artist Vincent van Gogh in the peer reviewed journal Reconfigurations? And more, in terms of academic peer reviewed publications, covering art, philosophy and spirituality, even beyond Africana and which yet which is about 1% percent of his total publication output?
Is that not the kind of person you should be learning from?
You might feel negatively challenged or inadequate on account of your non-productivity while faced with the creativity of an Adepoju. I have suggested you could begin by writing a few things and sharing them here, even its just one sentence observations of your thoughts, so people like me as well as others can help you look at them. I started writing by being bold. That is good advice I have given you.
A Nigerian pidgin English saying goes ''If person senior you by one day, e senior you.'' Talk less a person who is your senior by more than ten years of daily work and steady publication while you claim you are postponing publication till eternity.
Anyone who wants to understand what I represent may start with my blog Ifa Student and Teacher, where I began to write about the Yoruba origin Ifa system of knowledge in its visual, literary, philosophical and spiritual dimensions, containing original work, some of it of a kind unreplicated anywhere, such as the first posts, imaginative explorations of the origins of Ifa.
The person can then move to my more than 80 blogs on Blogger, to my Facebook, academia.edu, Scribd and YouTube accounts, which contain original work by myself on various aspects of African, Asian and Western thought. You may also see my contributions in the field of the philosophy of Ubiquitous Computing in its subfield of Metapolis and Urban Life.
Everybody, one life. What you do with it is your choice.
toyin
--
Toyin Adepoju:
I have said the problem is not the sources. It is how the sources are used.
Anyone used to scholarly discourses understands that. It is a question of interpretation of sources. I queried whether this is how people grounded in Yoruba thought would analyse those sources. I queried whether the conclusions are legitimate or misleading. Is that too much to ask?
The implications are ( and I suppose this is why you keep posting them) that you wanted to create the impression these are the current accepted interpretation to be cited in further discourses. I question that because that is a disservice to Yoruba civilization to which I belong.
What is wrong in that.? Why should you pressure the forum members to stop me from commenting on your work?
Others have made such comments in the past and they actually privately urge me not to waste my time that you only listen to your own voice. But I said you would take that to celebrate that non objection means a body of intellectuals approved it and that means it is valid. That wrong impression maintained over time would lead to scholarship on Yoruba civilization losing its value in the long run.
I cant stop commenting on something objectionable I find in materials presented here. Thats why we are all here. This is not a private Facebook account in which you alone determine how its run then co-opt other members to support your views. Thats why you did not rely on your face book alone and have chosen to come here.
Toyin Adepoju anyone can be corrected. You can ignore the correction or accept it. You cannot stop it. You cant ask others to help you stifle an argument if you feel you are loosing. I suggested a way out that you clear materials with experts in the field before presentation if I you are not sure. I would do the same. That is constructive criticism.
Then people can praise the presentation as presented and that is what you want. But if you want comments on the raw materials as you compose them alone that is what you get from people like me. Is that not the reason you presented them? Production of valid knowledge is a collective enterprises.
Isnt that logical enough?
I f you then give the material to Oga TF (or Adeshina) to publish and I then object afterwards why should he not reply that 'its too late now, when Adepoju presented them to the whole forum you saw nothing bad in it?'And then you go on and chalk that to your talk of 'contributing' to Yoruba knowledge for a long time' and unsuspecting members of the public think it is valid. What valid contribution?
Productionof valid knowledge is a collective enterprise. That is why people like Bishop Kukah would give manuscripts to TF before publication. He did not feel too big to do that.
You want to scare people's from commenting on your work, so that you dump all manners of work on them. I am not scared
OAA
Sent from my Galaxy
-------- Original message --------From: Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>Date: 29/03/2021 11:52 (GMT+00:00)To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - African EpistemicMetaphors:FromtheMask to the Baobab : Toyin Falola and the MysticalDimensionofKnowledge 2
my people,
why wait until things degenerate before you step in?
someone diverts attention from analysing an intellectual production, instead focusing on ethnic authenticity.
he ignores the scholarly sources provided and insists the information provided is a fabulation by the presenter.
you all keep quiet.
when the discussion goes downhill from there you then speak up from a moral high ground.
a group is a collective responsibility, not the responsibility of the moderator alone.
if you want the group you belong to to be sustained as an intellectual forum, you need to play your role in ensuring that.
you may not post but you should at least support the efforts of those who do, at the very least by helping to protect them from bullies.
i make a point of posting original intellectual productions on this group.
agbetuyi hardly posts anything, talk less posting intellectual productions, his or anyone else's but that's okay. its his choice.
he has made it his mission, however, to try to denigrate adepoju's work, while claiming he is engaging in genuine scholarly criticism.
i have had, repeatedly, to urge him to separate genuine critique of ideas from negative personalisations.
i have been alone in urging him to clean up his approach. i got no help from anyone.
when he has heeded my insistence, some fruitful dialogue has ensued.
from time to time, however, he devolves to his bolekaja tactics, such as refusing to analyse the information presented and addressing irrelevancies, such as insisting on leaving yoruba studies for yoruba people and claiming i am fabricating information for which i have provided scholarly sources.
if you keep your distance when such openly unscholarly behaviour is going on, on what what moral ground you stand to object when agbetuyi is reminded that with all his so called yoruba ancestry he has contributed nothing to yoruba thought unlike adepoju who has been publishing in that field for years?
my people, let's take maintaining a decent environment on the group as a collective responsibility.
if someone is behaving wrongly, correct them. don't wait until the situation degenerates further.
thanks
toyin
--On Mon, 29 Mar 2021 at 00:39, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:
--
Alagba MOA;
INo one needs place any material on the forum. I dont know when last I read your material here. Its a while since I put mine here too.
Like its been said as an axiom of publication its ' publish and be damned.' You cant attack anyone that critiqued your work if no one forced you to display them.
Let me reassure you that if Toyin Adepoju places any other material here, I will critique it as best as I can. It may not be flattering if it does not deserve to be. It is my basic right to do so as it is his to place any material anywhere he likes.
If I place mine here too please critique it as hard as you could ( that includes any other members of the forum who wishes to do so.) I will not feel insulted. I can go on with Adepoju on this work for the next one week if he feels like it. Nothing he says can move me. That is the collateral damage of public discourse for anyone who chooses to engage in it.
Thats why it is said if you cant stand the heat dont stay near the fire. After all we all critique public figures too here.
Dont forget Im a veteran journalist on the field. We are trained to grow thick skin to insults and ride with them
OAA
Sent from my Galaxy
-------- Original message --------From: 'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>Date: 28/03/2021 20:12 (GMT+00:00)Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - African Epistemic Metaphors:FromtheMask to the Baobab : Toyin Falola and the Mystical DimensionofKnowledge 2
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An Open Letter to the Moderator, Ojogbon Agba Falola, as well as Alagba Agbetuyi and Oluwatoyin Adepoju . . .
Honestly, I think enough is enough! With this level of unnecessary confrontations, bordering on the petty, the moderator needs to call a truce before the well-meaning members start checking out.
Gentlemen: You are both extremely intelligent and hardworking, and I do not say this lightly. I am of the humble opinion, though, that you need to expend your intellectual capitals in ways that would enhance and not put each other down. Please stop this undue fixation with each other's limitations and occupy your (and our) much cherished spaces to feed us with intellectual nourishments that we are here to acquire, not personal insults and unprofessional exchanges.
PLEASE!
MOA
--On Sunday, March 28, 2021, 2:49:34 PM GMT+1, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:
--
Toyin Adepoju.
Most of my response is not about my knowledge of native Yorùbá. Only a sentence on Oju l'oro wa dwells on my own knowledge of native Yoruba.
I have translated whole literary texts to Yorùbá. By this time next year you will need to swallow your own vomit regarding this allegation.
I have written on the need for theorising in Yorùbá language an have actually theorised in Yoruba. You have either got it or you havent.
Everybody is blessed with at least one native tongue as we comparatists believe. You need to dwell on your areas of strength and not keep exposing your areas of weakness. If Edo is your native tongue then do your analysis in Ifá in Edo and not in Yoruba that you hardly understand. Or are you not proficient even in Edo? Are you English monolingual?
If you truly have a Masters in a particular field, your mentors have adjudged to be better in that field than in other areas. Concentrate in that area for development of your scholarship rather than areas where your efforts are hardly better than sophomoric.
My hardworking brother it is up to you how to let your hard work shine.
Im done for comments on this particular presentation of yours. Take it or leave it.
OAA
Sent from my Galaxy
-------- Original message --------From: Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>Date: 28/03/2021 09:20 (GMT+00:00)To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - African Epistemic Metaphors :FromtheMask to the Baobab : Toyin Falola and the Mystical Dimension ofKnowledge 2
OAA, you are contributing nothing to the discussion.
Knowledge of difference between metaphorical and literal expression missing.
Most of your response is spent in extolling your native knowledge of Yoruba rather than engaging in analysis of ideas.
Yet, with all this boasting, you have published nothing in the field of Yoruba thought.
You cant compare with Adepoju whose peer reviewed publications on the subject are very visible and whose publications on the subject on varied platforms constitute a library.
You are the same man whose scholarly publications in any platforms do not exceed 3 publications in 40 years, of whom there is no evidence of having published anything else anywhere, whose most visible scholarly activity as his efforts to debate with Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju and who claims he has many unpublished works incubating in his house over decades and yet who boasts he was an academic in the US for several years, a puzzling anomaly for a person for whom there is no evidence that he has ever been a scholar.
Please leave me out of such time wasting exercises.
When you are ready for serious discussion of ideas, not ethnic grandstanding, you know what to do.
thanks
toyin
--On Sun, 28 Mar 2021 at 04:13, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com> wrote:
OAA,
I'm not really interested in this style of debate you are demonstrating.
I dont see it as worthy of my time.
If I change my mind, i'll let you know.
toyin
On Sat, 27 Mar 2021 at 13:44, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:
--
Òró moving about naked to depict its 'danger and accessibility' is not the way the Yorùbá ( learned or colloquial) normally interpret òrò. Òró is not roaming about nakedbutis generated interpersonally by interlocutors. Òrò as written discourse is simply a representation of this phenomenon as in any language so nothing in that is peculiar to Yorùbá or any other African language.
All this idea that Òrò is a naked objective entity roaming about naked until captured is what I referred to as Toyin Adepòju's personal fabulation and does not represent any theory of how any Yorùbá views òrò.
It is unhelpful to quote Pius Adeyemi in this decontexualised manner. Pius Adeyemi was a native Yorùbá speaker as well as I am and I know ' the context of ' 'oju l'oro wa' and its usage. It refers to òrò as a process of inter- personal communication thats all. It does not in any way refer to òrò as an objectified phenomenon roaming about in the streets until inter- locutors capture it and clothe it to cover its obscene nakedness.
More knowledge of how Yorùbá language works is needed to do justice to an essay of this nature. Perhaps a certificate in Yorùbá language for non- native speakers?
Contact Professor Akintunde who might be able to assist in organising such courses.
Native English speakers or proficient English users struggle in philosophy courses because of its abstract nature and a lot of my freshman and sophomore classmates had to drop philosophy courses for this reason. The same is true of any language including Yorùbá.
Karin Barber was a proficient speaker of Yorùba before she could attempt some of her work you cited. She was not working from the pages of books on English translations of Yorùbá as you do. The fact you cite English translation of proficient Yorùba speakers does not mean you do justice to their work and the discourses they represent. In fact in many instances such as this you mutilate them.
To be a scholar ( as opposed to a student) in any discipline implies you have passed the initial student phase. The standards used to assess scholars are considerable higher and errors made cannot be acceptable if they are not acceptable from sophomore. It is just not intentional harshness in critiques, it is just the way things are in the academia.
Although I am familiar with economic theory to allow me participate in intelligent debates in them because I took Economics at Advanced level and took undergraduate courses in Economics, that does not qualify me to present myself as scholar in Economic theory. How much more a language that is the clearing house of other disciplines. Can you accept Toyin Falola as a scholar in History if he has only a rudimentary knowledge of History? ( I have told him point black I dont consider him a literary scholar because he does not possess the basic training and adequate knowledge to be so considered and the literati in the forum will agree with me.)
A lot more knowledge and grasp of Yorùbá language and culture is needed for philosophical discourses on the language. Philosophers of language operate at the very highest levels of linguistic formations. People cant run if they have no legs.
OAA
Sent from my Galaxy
-------- Original message --------From: Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>Date: 27/03/2021 10:50 (GMT+00:00)To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>Cc: Yoruba Affairs <yorubaaffairs@googlegroups.com>Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - African Epistemic Metaphors : FromtheMask to the Baobab : Toyin Falola and the Mystical Dimension of Knowledge 2
resending since the first one might not have went-
thanks Olayinka.
the concept of Òrò described in this context is superordinate to the conventional one.
as i state in the essay, ''Òrò is more broadly understood as an issue under discussion, a point of reference, or more learnedly, as discourse.''
That is the conventional understanding you reference in terms of Òrò as something being discussed, perceived as the spoken word in a more specific sense, as you put it.
As I expect you will agree, however, a discussion implies reflection on what is being discussed, discussing being both an expression of reflection and a means of reflection.
Reflection and its projection in human expression imply consciousness.
The myth being referred to is a dramatisation of these ideas, tracing the source of human consciousness and its capacity for reflection and expression to the cognitive powers Ogbón(Wisdom), Ìmò(Knowledge), and Òye (Understanding), created by the ultimate creator Olódùmarè.
The myth depicts the human capacity for expression as rooted in those divine powers.
Those divine powers were hurled to Earth by Olódùmarè. In their combined form on Earth, they are Òrò.
This divine capacity is what is dramatised, at various levels of crudity, subtlety and power in human expression.
Its pristine character, its naked essence, however, is too potent for direct human expression. Hence, it is best approached through òwe , imaginative expressions. Òrò is depicted as moving about naked in order to suggest that paradoxical combination of accessibility and dangerous potency.
I sum it up this way-
''Òrò, the unified complex of potential for awareness and expression emerging from the creator of the cosmos and accessible to humanity, roams the world naked, its luminous empowerment accessible to all''.
The myth is a style of exploring and presenting ideas through fictional narrative.
Pius Adesanmi's essay ''Oju l'oro Wa'', rich on oro as discourse and multi-expressive communication, is a fine complement to Abiodun's essay as is Mary Nooter Robert's introductory essays to her exhibition on vision in African art, developing the idea of the relationship of oro to visual perception in the Yoruba expression that is the title of Adesanmi's essay.
The myth Abiodun presents and discusses is correlative with the global presence of ideas of language, humanity's primary expressive capacity, as patterned after divine expression.
The essay where it is first discussed by Abiodun is attached to my mail after this one. It is one of Abiodun's best works and an iconic piece in African aesthetics and hermeneutics. Magnificent Yoruba poetry. Superb translations. Powerful analyses yet expressively beautiful.
It was written and published while he was at the then University of Ife, at a time that university incubated much of what is known today as Yoruba Studies, significantly through its African Studies Centre.
Abiodun reworks and extends the essay's ideas in the first chapter of his Yoruba Art and Language in terms of his theory of oriki, the Yoruba art form of celebration of the essence and expression of an entity-as it may be described in its multi disciplinary form rather than limited to its better known verbal form-a theory developed from Olabiyi Yai, himself a mentor to Karin Barber, author of the landmark book on verbal oriki.
thanks
toyin
--On Sat, 27 Mar 2021 at 04:57, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:
--
Toyin Adepoju:
Either you or Rowland Abiodun ( or both) are confusing the two senses of Òrò.
Why is it forbidden to see òrò the spoken word with naked eyes? Is there any possibility of such seeing, when oro belongs to the mouth and not the eyes? ( naked or assisted)
Where is the sense in òrò ( spoken word) walking naked that can be applied to any theory of discourse?
OAA
Sent from my Galaxy
-------- Original message --------From: Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>Date: 27/03/2021 02:45 (GMT+00:00)To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>, Yoruba Affairs <yorubaaffairs@googlegroups.com>Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - African Epistemic Metaphors : From theMask to the Baobab : Toyin Falola and the Mystical Dimension of Knowledge 2
--
African Epistemic Metaphors
from the Mask to the Baobab
Toyin Falola and the Mystical Dimension of Knowledge
2
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Abstract
This essay is an exploration of images of knowledge from classical African thought, juxtaposed with discussions of the work of scholar and writer Toyin Falola, correlating these with other bodies of knowledge, in relation to the mystical quest for intimate relationship with ultimate reality.
Nommo Imploring Rain
Some of the most moving images of prayer for me are sculptures of Nommo from the art of the Dogon of Mali. They show a naked figure, hands outstretched, reaching towards the sky, the figure's streamlined body giving the entire gesture a sense of poignant force arising from total dedication of self to the upward focus represented by the body's thrust.
The last time I read the description of one of these figures at the site where I saw it, it stated, "Nommo, imploring rain." Really? Only rain? But as I compose this, I recall what John Mbiti writes about rain in classical African cultures:
rain is seen as the eternal and mystical link between past, present and future generations. …one of the most concrete and endless rhythms of nature: as it came, it comes and it will come [a] vital rhythm of creation [that knows no end, linking humanity] with the divine…a manifestation of the eternal, in the here and now [symbolizing humanity's ] contact with the blessings of time and eternity.[1]
What have these beautiful ideas got to do with Falola scholarship? Nommo implores rain, so one may call upon knowledge, in its varied manifestations, knowledge as a demonstration of human creativity, houses of knowledge whose corridors reverberate as rain, adapting Yoruba oriki chanter Sangowemi,[2] houses built by each person in explicit or implicit collaboration with others, configurations organized around varied ways of knowing, diverse subjects of enquiry.
Can these be unified, perhaps in infinity?
Forms of Infinity in Yoruba and Akan Thought
Infinity as an unending expansion of possibilities, as depicted by Ogundiran? Or infinity as deathlessness, as indicated by the Yoruba expression, "aiku pari iwa,"[3] "deathlessness consummates existence," or as a state beyond time and suffering, as Orisa philosopher Susanne Wenger puts it in Rolf Brockmann and Gerd Hötter's Adunni : A Portrait of Susanne Wenger?
Or in terms of the Akan Adinkra visual symbol Gye Nyame, enigmatic and abstract, perhaps suggesting the distance of identity, the ontological remoteness, between the divine subject the abstractions evoke and the total field of existence, a transcendence of being and cognitive possibility correlative with the Akan understanding of an ultimate creator, the eternal witness of existence, who subsumes the transformations of being into themself?
Within this context the universe is conceived in terms of a transformative process perceived in its totality only from a central point of consciousness which constitutes its origin, as expressed in the Twi proverb "Abode santann yi firi tete;obi nte ase a onim ahyease, na obi ntena ae nkosi ne awie, Gye Nyame" "This great panorama of creation dates back to time immemorial; no one lives who saw its beginning and no one will live to see its end, except Nyame."[4]
A tantalizing idea, which, with its elevated sweep and inspiring loftiness, may provoke aspirations to participate in such an intelligence, to the degree that the human mind is capable of that.
Epistemic Images
Philosophy enables us understand our time in thought, Falola thus references German philosopher Georg Friedrich Hegel,[5] incidentally evoking Hegel's project of comprehending the development of history in terms of patterns of human thought ( The Philosophy of History) and understanding the development of human cognitive potential in terms of patterns unifying reflective thought and cosmic development ( The Phenomenology of Mind and The History of Philosophy). A speculative aspiration, though yielding rich insights and profound social consequences.
The multi-perspectival windows of Ogundiran on Orisa as constellations of human experience multiplying into infinity and of Ulli Beier on these cosmological figures as windows for viewing the unity of reality from particular perspectives, partial insights subsumed in an ultimate harmony, the ecosystemic complexity and ungraspable breadth of the baobab, the calabash of totality, Falola's pluriversalistic modes of enquiry within multidisciplinary frameworks.
May these cognitive matrices be adaptable to another project that aspires to achieve what a commentator on the Greek philosopher Aristotle states the pioneering thinker had to concede after a lifetime laying foundations of thought in general, and in specific disciplines in particular, "the ultimate impossibility of conceptually unifying all of being"?[6]
The Paradoxical Old Man: The Fulani Kaidara
A bent and dirty old man, clothes infested with lice, demands to see the king. The palace guards try to drive away the impudent figure but are stopped by the monarch, who invites the destitute person to his table. Amidst the convivial feast, the unlikely figure reveals to the king mysteries to which he had long sought answers in vain. The king tries to embrace him in joy, but the figure withdraws and departs, transformed into a creature of light who blasts off into space.
Kaidara, a beam of light from the hearth of Gueno, the creator of the universe, assuming the form of a decrepit old man to test who is ready to learn what he has to offer, a knowledge that is reached only by discerning the real from the apparent, sensing the treasure hidden in the unlikely figure of the old man.
Kaidara, near yet distant, embodiment of the scope, the limits and the reach of human knowledge, terrestrial and cosmic, as Ahmadu Hampate Ba tells and explains this gripping story in Kaidara: A Fulani Cosmological Epic from Mali.
I love the Kaidara image for its integration of the abstract and the concrete, the abstract idea of human cognitive possiblity and the concrete picture of a human being.
I am thrilled by its striking paradoxical conjunctions, between enfeebled old age and destitution, on one hand, and concealed divine majesty and power, on the other.
I find deeply memorable its fusing of human cognitive limitations, the circle of possible knowledge, ever expanding to an unknown scope even as it strains against circumscriptions at every stage of this advance, on one hand, and explosive, expansive opening to knowledge, on the other.
Even more compelling is the actualization of these ideas through a focus on human sensitivity and humility, within the dynamic image of a figure, moving from place to place, meeting different people in various circumstances, assessing them for their readiness for the cognitive illumination of a lifetime which he embodies, an image evoking the wonder of every moment of human existence, the nondescript and the wonderful, the ordinary and the sublime.
The Nakedness of Òrò : A Yoruba Theory of Discourse
"Kólóḿbó ni Òròń rìn, 'Òrò moves around naked,', but it is forbidden to see it with… naked eyes,"[7] the Yoruba expression goes, another image of the opportunity for insight about the wonderful in the midst of the everyday that I find compelling.
Òrò, the unified complex of potential for awareness and expression emerging from the creator of the cosmos and accessible to humanity, roams the world naked, its luminous empowerment accessible to all, but, like the blaze of fire whose intense white heat is dangerous to eyes gazing directly at it, Òrò may not be safely engaged with directly but only through the indirection of òwe, imaginative expressions which mediate this luminosity, as majestically elaborated by Rowland Abiodun in Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art.
Òrò is more broadly understood as an issue under discussion, a point of reference, or more learnedly, as discourse. It is depicted, however, in the cosmogonic myth from which the description above comes, as representing cognitive and expressive potential in general. This cognitive and expressive capacity of humanity is itself grounded in the cognitive and expressive powers of the creator of the cosmos who created existence through these potencies and hurled them to Earth, where they became empowerments for humanity, enabling human cognitive and communicative capacity, from the mundane to the sublime.
At its core, this perspective suggests, human capacities for understanding and expression, even at their most mundane or lofty, from gossip to elevated thought, embody, deeply hidden under layers of thought and conventional expression, the force through which the universe was created, a core too potent for unmediated human encounter.
The cosmogonic roots of this image are resonant with the global complex of ideas correlating language and divine creativity.[8] The picture of Òrò moving around in a nakedness it is forbidden to see with naked eyes may further evoke human reliance on symbols to mediate the world. It may suggest the use of symbols, represented by òwe, to negotiate relationships with reality. These engagements are encapsulated within a sensitivity to the universe in general and human cognitive and expressive capacity in particular as embodying possibilities beyond the conventionally accessible, possibilities related to the core from which existence derives as an expression of ultimate meaning and value.
[1] African Religions and Philosophy, 1976,181.
[2] In Karin Baber's I Could Speak Until Tomorrow ( 1991, 17)
[3] Quoted by Rowland Abiodun in Yoruba Art and Language ( 2014, ),
[4] From my forthcoming Adinkra Cosmos.
[5] "Nimi Wariboko in the World of Philosophy," The Philosophy of Nimi Wariboko, 2021, 3-20, 3.
[6] "Aristotle," Encyclopedia Britannica, edition unrecalled).
[7] Rowland Abiodun, Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2014, 31-2.
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