Fact and Speculation in Historical Narrative
Part 1
Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yorùbá: A New History
Yorùbá History as a Quest for Meaning
Majestic art by Lamidi Fakeye at the Yemisi Shyllon Museum, Lagos, depicting a cross-section of figures-hunters, priests, mothers and others- from classical Yorùbá culture.
The artist interprets reality in terms of physical images. The archaeologist does the same through the excavation and study of material forms from the past. The historian explores the progression of experience in terms of the convergence of a range of sources.
All these disciplines are either deployed, as with archeology and history, or evoked, as with art, by Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yorùbá : A New History, 2020.
Picture by myself.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Abstract
A statement on what I find inspiring and challenging in Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yorùbá : A New History.
Inspiration and Challenge
I find Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yorùbá : A New History, 2020, inspiring and challenging.
Inspiration
Action and Reflection Driving Yoruba History
I am inspired by its narrative sweep and expressive drive, the sense of participating in the unfolding of great events that Ogundiran seamlessly generates in beautiful prose.
I am moved by the scope of ambition the book demonstrates in plotting Yorùbá history in terms of the responses of a group of people to diverse material and human environments as they migrate and settle across varied landscapes.
I am galvanized by the book's highlighting of the process of reflection in relation to action that characterizes the human being as homo sapiens, a self consciously reflective creature whose unique combination of biological enablement and mental empowerment has enabled it dominate the Earth.
Knowledge Capital and Community of Practice
In pursuit of this goal, Ogundiran mobilizes two primary ideational structures that I find deeply inspiring.
These are the ideas of "knowledge capital" and "community of practice."
Ogundiran presents the idea of community of practice in a manner that seems to integrate that of knowledge capital. In terms of my current understanding of the book, however, I find it useful to interpret the concept of knowledge capital as integrating that of community of practice because the idea of knowledge capital suggests the emphasis on ideational structures and values that define and bind a community, which is how Ogundiran defines the idea of community of practice.
The focus in both contexts is on ideas, on ways of interpreting reality and organizing society accordingly, therefore I prefer to describe the concept of knowledge capital as the overarching idea.
I am excited by this because the subject of how Africans think, how they construed their worlds across the centuries has been deeply contentious, in the absence of widespread written records.
I am inspired, therefore, by Ogundiran's effort to tell Yorùbá history as a history of thought in relation to action, exploring the interrelationships of thought and action, their mutual justifications and reinforcements.
Challenge
In additions to those qualities in Ogundiran's work which inspire me, I am challenged by those aspects of his narrative which, even though compelling, strike me as lacking strategic components, provoking me to ask how Ogundiran came to his conclusions at the intersection of sources and interpretations of sources, particularly in relation to a history whose primary sources are largely oral traditions and material culture, even though he has taken advantage of what generations of scholars have been built on these foundations.
Issues in the Development of Yorùbá Spirituality and Philosophy
I am provoked to ask if other, richer imaginings of the same history, operating in terms of a more diverse assemblage of probabilities, cannot be constructed, even if not at the monumental scope of Ogundiran's narration, given the multidisciplinary scope of knowledge he brings to bear, what is likely to be- a qualification on account of the limitations of my exposure to accounts of Yorùbá history, this book being the first to inspire my study of the subject- a unique convergence of the material, aesthetic and analytical sensitivities of an archeologist and the narrative and interpretive powers of a historian, his strongest points, allied to his efforts at integrating a perspective on the development of Yorùbá religious and philosophical thought and practice, the latter providing valuable insights while inadvertently suggesting how that third part of the project could be further developed, such possibilities of development being what I am exploring in this and other essays on this aspect of Ogundiran's book.
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