Great thanks Ken.
This feeds into the animistic cosmology of Yoruba and African thought.
Will reflect on it.
Thanks
Toyin
On Mon, Dec 27, 2021, 20:27 Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
--dear toyinrich question.i wonder why you want to focus so much on humans. i mean, it makes sense since you ask questions of us which can't be asked directly of others.but there was a time before language for homonoids, anyway; and they invented language to serve their needs. anyway whoever has a dog or cat knows they too express themselves to convey their needs. so do birds, and people study those sounds. so too do dolphins and whales and all; all communicate.we just do it better.i am intrigued by the thought of a comment i read some years ago that early humans blew through the bones of the deceased to evoke their spirits--maybe--producing notes. musical notes. we can duplicate the sounds of birds or other animals, and can figure out what some of those sounds mean.clearly a more intelligent being would produce more sounds.the logic of language, with its parts of speech, is simple enough.give me food.
the opening notes of a cardinal's song are easy enough.but from notes relating to more notes come songs, come cantatas, come complicated rhythms and polytonal music; come long extended compositions, and great musicians. and dances.i like the idea of asking your question by including music and animals, by all of us.
when it is food for thought, it gets complicatedken
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, December 26, 2021 4:11 AM
To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Cc: Yoruba Affairs <yorubaaffairs@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Rowland Abiodun and the Global Nexus of Hermeneutic, Aesthetic, Literary and Linguistic Theory ( Edited)--Rowland Abiodun and the Global Nexus of Hermeneutic, Aesthetic, Literary and Linguistic Theory
Oluwatoyin Vincent AdepojuCompcrosComparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
Where do I start from in my efforts to understand what my fellow humans think about our primary means of communication, language and it's imaginative uses in literature, in relation to other imaginative expressions, as in the visual and performative arts?
I am curious about the continuity between Hindu, Judaic and Yoruba ideas about the divine origins of language with Japanese poet Matsuo Basho's views, for one, about how the poetic language of haiku may evoke something both immediate and eternal, if I am not over simplifying his ideas, and Western literary theory in exploring the dynamics of human thought, as described by Jonathan Culler in Deconstruction:Theory and Criticism after Structuralism, compressed into his Literary Theory:A Very Short Introduction, as well as Georg Gadamer on the foundations of efforts to understand how people gain understanding, particularly in the study of texts, in his Truth and Method, distilling centuries of Western engagement with the significance of texts.
From cosmogonic accounts of language's origins to efforts to interpret the cosmogonic in terms of the contemporary, as may be represented by the Hindu thinker Abhinavagupta in such a text as the Paratrisika Vivarana, back to relationships between sacred language and the study of linguistics in Indian thought represented by Panini, forward to Rowland Abiodun on Yoruba theories of conjunctions between divine and human thought and expression, to Jewish Kabbalistic ideas of the resonance of divine speech in the human world and the influence of such views on literary theory, as represented by the work of Susan Handelman to the resonance of similar ideas in Western Romantic theory, as in the ideas of Coleridge and it's influence by his German inspirers, how I may anchor myself in this maelstrom of knowledge, find a guide through this global labyrinth, in construction since humanity learnt to reflect on it's own thinking and expression?
Umberto Eco, for example, contructs his own journey in The Search for the Perfect Language, and other texts. George Steiner pursues his own quest in After Babel: Thoughts on Literature and the Language Revolution, in Language and Silence and perhaps other works.
How best may I pursue mine, integrating my fascinations with the intersections between the visual and verbal arts?
All seekers for knowledge may best start wherever they are, using as a pivot whatever means most to them, in embarking on the infinite voyage.
I am increasingly intrigued by the work of Rowland Abiodun on what may be described as oriki theory, which may be rendered as a theory of discourse, of expression and it's relationship to human reflection, developed by a sequence of thinkers in Yoruba philosophy, and synthesised, further developed and applied by Abiodun in his book Yoruba Art and Language as the latest development in his engagement with the significance of literature and it's relationship to the other arts in Yoruba thought.
Why do I find Abiodun's work pivotal in relation to my efforts to understand the perennial human effort to shape reality through imagination, particularly in the intersection between the imaginative use of language, literature and other arts?
I find it strategic beceause it encapsulates the central themes of this journey of humanity's, doing this through the exploratory strategies of mythic narrative and analytical and expository text, a presentation enriched by the balance of playfulness and depth that characterises Yoruba Ifa narratives, radiant with memorable images evoking central orientations in this quest for foundational knowledge.
Human activity is human beceause it is grounded in human capacities for thought and action. What is the ultimate source of these powers, including and going beyond biology and sociation? Do they have any relationship with the cosmic location of our existence as homo sapiens within a cosmos both amenable to our understanding and resistant to it?
"Oro", the one who, before time, had no one to communicate with and started groaning, is a character through which one of the Ifa myths Abiodun discusses frames this subject.
Oro finds it's way to Earth eventually, roaming naked across the world, indicative of the ubiquity and immediacy of communication and it's roots in consciousness and reflection, but may not be safely perceived by naked eyes.
The potencies of communicative potential are best approached through discretion, represented by the use of "owe", imaginative expressions that facilitate sensitivity to it's explosive force.
What are the ultimate possibilities of these imaginative strategies? How do they implicate the relationship between the self and it's ultimate possibilities?
Can they be used as a means of exploring questions at the borders of possibility, questions about the essence of the universe, questions about the progression of human life, the invocation of the depths of human possibility and their intersection with cosmic possibility, in terms of oriki, a Yoruba understanding of imagination as a means of exploring where conventional thought cannot go, seeking to unravel the essences and dynamism of phenomena through the evocative value of language, objects and performances?
The sound before silence. A thunderous object hitting the ground. The sound "ku," making the heart miss a beat, reverberations from Abiodun's explorations of the possibilities of sound as a primary communicative force, as these ideas emerge from thinkers whose names are lost in the midst of an oral past, but which their lettered descendant examines and projects to the world.
Abiodun's work does not engage in analysis of these questions in terms of their resonance across cultures. His attention is purely on Yoruba thought and on a particular understanding of it, developed by particular people rethinking more pervasive conceptions in this culture, teasing new possibilities our of them, exploring their implications, investigations through the vehicle of myth which Abiodun takes forward using the instrument of the Western scholarly tradition in which he has been thoroughly trained, foregrounding the delights of Yoruba orality through his positioning within Western scholarship, deconstructing limitations of understanding African thought within that house of knowledge that yet increasingly develops a capaciousness that accomodates even it's critics, thereby empowering itself as a global house of knowledge, even if it's core in European cognitive history remians dominant.
From the house Abiodun builds within this bigger house, one can better understand Yoruba thought and it's consistencies with other African and non-African thought, ancient voices in harmony, blending in new insights into their unity in diversity.
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Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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