"Like a general planning a war, he
maps various theatres of activity
and works out how to mobilise
resources to address that theatre.
Mapping his own resources and those
of others he can work with…"
Toyin Adepoju
An apt description. Perceptive.
Your suggestion on the launching of
"Toyin Falola Studies" is noted.
I recall suggesting that Falola should
consider establishing a university, a few
years ago, namely, the Toyin Falola
University. Toyin Falola Studies would
be quite appropriate in that setting-
as long as it is done in the context of
critical thinking and not sycophancy.
The thought police should have absolutely
no place in a healthy intellectual
environment.
Other universities should follow suit
and place TFS on the curriculum.
This field of study would be
multidisciplinary, and would reflect on
methodological assumptions and
methodologies, ideologies, logical
consistencies, philosophical
orientations, content and context,
orthodoxy, geopolitics - and equally important
strategizing, as this relates to knowledge
production and the
accumulated body of knowledge
associated with the Toyin Falola
Intellectual network.
The price of the books to be
studied would fall
with market expansion, hopefully.
The general may be able to assist in
solving that problem.
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
From: Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2022 10:36 AM
To: Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>
Cc: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Atrocities/war crimes condoned in the Bible
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2022 10:36 AM
To: Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>
Cc: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Atrocities/war crimes condoned in the Bible
Please be cautious: **External Email**
Thanks, Gloria, for intimating me of yet another book by that demon of knowledge, Toyin Falola.
The word ''demon,'' in this context, indicates the inexplicable, related to the term ''daemon,'' indicating a spiritual power beyond human control or understanding, outside the pale of circumscription by human desires or aspirations.
The term ''angel'' may relate too closely to ideas of value too readily bound to human expectations, within verbal cultures in which the angelic and the numinous are not correlated, with the angelic being associated purely with outcomes within the pale of easily understood value. In such cultures, the awesomeness of such conceptions of the angelic as the cherubim, angels of love, and the seraphim, angels of wisdom, are not prominent.
Works of demonic horror are well known, such as those of the great H.P. Lovecraft, master of the demonic numinous, but less so works on angelic power, such as Frank Peretti's This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness, centred on contests between spiritual good and evil, in which angelic forces are particularly prominent, understandably so, since Lovecraft's kind of genius is unique. Of the three volumes of Dante's Divine Comedy, his journey through hell, purgatory and heaven, that of hell is best known, being the most vivid and concrete.
The term ''angel'' may relate too closely to ideas of value too readily bound to human expectations, within verbal cultures in which the angelic and the numinous are not correlated, with the angelic being associated purely with outcomes within the pale of easily understood value. In such cultures, the awesomeness of such conceptions of the angelic as the cherubim, angels of love, and the seraphim, angels of wisdom, are not prominent.
Works of demonic horror are well known, such as those of the great H.P. Lovecraft, master of the demonic numinous, but less so works on angelic power, such as Frank Peretti's This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness, centred on contests between spiritual good and evil, in which angelic forces are particularly prominent, understandably so, since Lovecraft's kind of genius is unique. Of the three volumes of Dante's Divine Comedy, his journey through hell, purgatory and heaven, that of hell is best known, being the most vivid and concrete.
Thus referencing a ''demon of knowledge,'' one inverts the negative associations of the demonic, to evoke the inexplicable, the unanticipatable, the Eshu like quality, from Yoruba cosmology, of upsetting reality in ways that rework conceptions of order and disorder.
The first page of a Google search for that Falola book also leads one to Falola's forthcoming African Spirituality, Politics and Knowledge Systems, coming from Bloomsbury, J.K. Rowling's publishers, mistress of magical fantasy fiction,who are also bringing out his book on Fela with Adeshina Afolayan, along with the one on Soyinka he brought out with Bola Dauda last year.
I expect more of his books will be coming out this year from other publishers.
I expect more of his books will be coming out this year from other publishers.
I think I begin to understand how he can be so productive. Like a general planning a war, he maps various theatres of activity and works out how to mobilise resources to address that theatre. Mapping his own resources and those of others he can work with, he goes into action using a time frame, working with others-which he does very well, unlike most humanities scholars, who are often lone warriors-or on his own. With persistence, books unfold in numbers year after year. As for published essays and addresses, those are likely to be even more numerous but are less readily trackable without an inventory from Falola himself.
I first came across his name at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in 2004. I kept seeing the same name as the author of various books in different sections of the library.
''Who is this person?" I asked my SOAS teacher. He responded, as if to say, ''even I am amazed.''
I met a lecturer in history from a Nigerian university at the Cambridge Institute of African Studies some years later and asked her views on Falola. ''How does he measure up to the great historians who have created the modern study of African history?" I enquired. ''He has achieved more than all of them put together,'' she responded.
I first came across his name at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in 2004. I kept seeing the same name as the author of various books in different sections of the library.
''Who is this person?" I asked my SOAS teacher. He responded, as if to say, ''even I am amazed.''
I met a lecturer in history from a Nigerian university at the Cambridge Institute of African Studies some years later and asked her views on Falola. ''How does he measure up to the great historians who have created the modern study of African history?" I enquired. ''He has achieved more than all of them put together,'' she responded.
There is a need for a Toyin Falola Fellowship, a Toyin Falola Professorship and a Toyin Falola Institute.
The fellowship will be centred on the study of the works of Falola. The professorship will be held by a scholar in African Studies and perhaps any field-since Falola's work can also illuminate and inspire outside African Studies-who has also made significant contributions to the study of the works and perhaps life of Falola. The Institute will collect all Falola's works, along with texts that contextualise that work, in print and electronic form, making them freely available to the public, and organise studies around this corpus.
When will a biography of Falola, presenting Falola's life and work be coming out?
When will a biography of Falola, presenting Falola's life and work be coming out?
Achievements are consolidated through such initiatives. Books are great, representing a first step. Falola's works are too diverse, too speedily emerging, for the two books on his work by Abdul Bangura and essays about Falola's work to be adequate.
This proliferation of productivity needs to be continually synthesised as its boundaries are continuously expanded or redrawn by new publications and initiatives. Falola Studies needs to be established as a field with macro and micro orientations, overviews of the entire corpus of texts and activities and studies on specific sections and subsections- the essays and books on religion, for example, those on history, those on economics, the multidisciplinary texts, the autobiographical works, the philosophical works, the poetry, etc.
Knowledge grows through organisation and systematisation, even as the systematic and the architectonic remain in tension with the unstructured in the name of evolving creativity.
I suspect that the level of scholarly attention Falola's work has enjoyed so far is far below its evocative possibilities. I am referring to direct engagement with his ideas, not only the conferences inspired by his work, magnificent as those are. Those who are better informed could enlighten one better.
I suspect that the reason Skip Gates at Harvard is a national figure, in my view, is because his field is African American Studies with Africa as complementary. Abiola Irele's ''African Scholar,'' complementing his earlier ''In Praise of Alienation,'' outlines, in painfully poignant terms, his understanding of the less than central place of African Studies in US intellectual life, as he saw it from his migrant position at the University of Ohio, after his heyday as a luminary in the golden age of African Studies in Africa before the shifting of its centre of gravity to the US. Again, those who are better informed, such as those in the Western academy, some of whom have written on and edited books on this subject, can enlighten one better.
Jewish Studies thrives in the US. The political, economic and cultural force of US Jews is well known. The originating zone and location of some of the most impactful scholarship of one of the newer, innovative fields of Jewish Studies, Jewish Mysticism, however, is the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, represented by the pioneering work of Gershom Scholem and his intellectual descendants at that university, as demonstrated by the ceaselessly emerging tomes of Moshe Idel, the work of Joseph Dan and the more recent achievements of Moshe Halbertal and others.
Scholem's studies emerged in the midst of the rising anti-Semitism in Germany, climaxing in the Holocaust and the later triumph of Zionism in setting up the State of Israel, nationalistic and ethnic survival issues within which Scholem was deeply implicated, related to his struggle, as a German Jew, in Germany, to master Hebrew and to reconstruct ancient wisdoms of his people, perhaps part of the efforts of European Jews to discover or consolidate their Jewishness on finding out that assimilation to European culture was not enough to fully humanise them in the face of anti-Semitism, the terrible lesson European Jews had to absorb through Hitler.
The maturation of the study of Western Esotericism, one of the newer fields in the Western academy, at the University of Amsterdam, after earlier emergence at the University of Paris, the Parisian and Netherlandish initiatives coalescing to flower in the international study of this field in the West, is understandable only within the context of its cultural framework in the centres of the cultures it studies, integrating English, French, German and other European languages through which the texts it explores have been constructed over the centuries to reach the scholarly crucibles of universities run by those living within and identifying with those cultures.
Jewish Studies thrives in the US. The political, economic and cultural force of US Jews is well known. The originating zone and location of some of the most impactful scholarship of one of the newer, innovative fields of Jewish Studies, Jewish Mysticism, however, is the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, represented by the pioneering work of Gershom Scholem and his intellectual descendants at that university, as demonstrated by the ceaselessly emerging tomes of Moshe Idel, the work of Joseph Dan and the more recent achievements of Moshe Halbertal and others.
Scholem's studies emerged in the midst of the rising anti-Semitism in Germany, climaxing in the Holocaust and the later triumph of Zionism in setting up the State of Israel, nationalistic and ethnic survival issues within which Scholem was deeply implicated, related to his struggle, as a German Jew, in Germany, to master Hebrew and to reconstruct ancient wisdoms of his people, perhaps part of the efforts of European Jews to discover or consolidate their Jewishness on finding out that assimilation to European culture was not enough to fully humanise them in the face of anti-Semitism, the terrible lesson European Jews had to absorb through Hitler.
The maturation of the study of Western Esotericism, one of the newer fields in the Western academy, at the University of Amsterdam, after earlier emergence at the University of Paris, the Parisian and Netherlandish initiatives coalescing to flower in the international study of this field in the West, is understandable only within the context of its cultural framework in the centres of the cultures it studies, integrating English, French, German and other European languages through which the texts it explores have been constructed over the centuries to reach the scholarly crucibles of universities run by those living within and identifying with those cultures.
The situation of African scholars and scholarship on Africa in the West is one I see as deeply enabling, empowering them to maximise their potentials in contexts absent in Africa.
Christianity was born in Palestine, but it flourished most in Europe and from the West, now has Africa and perhaps Latin America as its most vigorous centres even as it continues to flame in the West. Buddhism comes from India, but after centuries its centres became Japan, China, Tibet and other Asian countries.
Where is African Studies likely to thrive most? Is it operating at full capacity at present?
Where should a centre or centres of Falola Studies be best sited, given the international, multi-continental character of the Falola Network, the complex of collaborators creating scholarship directed by or inspired by the example of Toyin Falola?
Or like the Jews, described by Idel as moving from a geographical to a textual centre, moving from centering in the temple at Jerusalem after it was destroyed by the Romans and the Jews dispersed, to a textual centre, making their holy texts more than ever the centres of their community, should Falola Studies be better appreciated in terms of texts of integration and consolidation, of synthesis and distillation, guides to the universe of Falola scholarship and Falola inspired writings?
However this is perceived, an urgent challenge faces Toyin Falola and his network. Their books belong largely within the economically elitist model of the Western academy. A very prestigious model, represented, par excellence, by such academic publishers as Cambridge University Press, books that are strategic in their fields, representing the most concentrated labours, over years, of some of the world's best scholars, but too often formidably priced, beyond the reach of most even in the buoyant economies of the West.
''These books are not meant for individuals, but for institutions,'' I was told by a staff member at Cambridge UP's flagship bookshop in Cambridge, which sells only their books, when I mentioned the issue of price. I bought Rowland Abiodun's Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art from that bookshop shortly after it came out in 2014. Having taken the bold step of spending 80 pounds on the book, I returned it for my money back, on the sober understanding that I could not afford it.
The idea that Cambridge UP books are not meant for the individual reader is an exaggeration, though, as represented by the cheaper, survey textbooks at the front of the bookshop as I saw it last in 2016.
But if you want to drink of the depths of Cambridge UP, their superb coverage of Western philosophy for example, as in their perhaps matchless publications by and about the pivotal Western philosopher Immanuel Kant, ior their magnificent, cutting edge or gloriously synthesising works in science, you must be economically powerfully armed or have access to libraries that are, which, as a Cambridge student with access to the numerous college libraries, the university library network and the awesome university central library, is not an issue, an enablement similar to lesser or greater degrees for Western universities.
The idea that Cambridge UP books are not meant for the individual reader is an exaggeration, though, as represented by the cheaper, survey textbooks at the front of the bookshop as I saw it last in 2016.
But if you want to drink of the depths of Cambridge UP, their superb coverage of Western philosophy for example, as in their perhaps matchless publications by and about the pivotal Western philosopher Immanuel Kant, ior their magnificent, cutting edge or gloriously synthesising works in science, you must be economically powerfully armed or have access to libraries that are, which, as a Cambridge student with access to the numerous college libraries, the university library network and the awesome university central library, is not an issue, an enablement similar to lesser or greater degrees for Western universities.
A good no of the volumes being produced by the Falola Network are at the extreme edge of price in this system, with the e books being cheaper.
Will the cheaper cost of the e books help accessibility in Africa? Are physical books not also vital for the embodied entity that is the human being, particularly with the low levels of electricity required to power electronic devices in a country like Nigeria and the cost of access to the Internet in the same country? Would cheaper copies of these books produced for the African market alone be a solution? What would be the economic viability of that? Would the possibility of small print runs offered by newer printing models be helpful? Can a Falola Centre play a strategising role in such initiatives?
Will the cheaper cost of the e books help accessibility in Africa? Are physical books not also vital for the embodied entity that is the human being, particularly with the low levels of electricity required to power electronic devices in a country like Nigeria and the cost of access to the Internet in the same country? Would cheaper copies of these books produced for the African market alone be a solution? What would be the economic viability of that? Would the possibility of small print runs offered by newer printing models be helpful? Can a Falola Centre play a strategising role in such initiatives?
thanks
toyin
On Wed, 12 Jan 2022 at 06:52, Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu> wrote:
Your points are noted and contributeto the overall discourse, no doubt.
Incidentally I was recently asked by CHOICEto do a review of Falola and Griffin's "ReligiousBeliefs and Knowledge Systems in Africa. "I am still in the process of reading the book.The section on Biblical Criticism and BiblicalEpistemology pp125- 142 attracted myattention.
You may find the discussion onQuranic epistemology, pp 105- 122equally interesting.
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
From: Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2022 12:15 AM
To: Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>
Cc: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Atrocities/war crimes condoned in the BiblePlease be cautious: **External Email**
Thanks Gloria.
It would be helpful to have a context to help readers assimilate such information.
If I'm getting right what might be your drift, I would argue that while all those horrors are true, along with others one could compile for Christianity as a sister Abrahamic religion with Judaism and Islam, and one could do same for classical African religions withsuch evils as human sacrifice, I know only one religion today in which clear inhumanities are officially condoned, and that is Islam.
It's the only religion I know where a person could be officially executed for not not respecting or not adequately respecting the founder of the religion, such sentences being passed recently in Northern Nigeria and the fatwa on Rushdie that threw the Islamic world into a frenzy, claiming so many lives.
It's the only one I know marked by adherents who go out of their way to murder those who criticise or make fun of their founder, as the two time terrorist killings in Paris on account of the Muhammed cartoons, the beheading of a teacher in France, if I got that right, since I did not follow up the news, the killing of van Gogh in Amsterdam, for a film critically examining something negative about Islam, and the recurrent massacres, riots and beheadings in Northern Nigeria, all in defense of Islam.
It's the only religion in the world known to me whose members organise themselves into armed groups to compel others to follow their own brand of the religion, killing children, women, defencesless men, engaging in sexual slavery, massacres of Christians in packed churches, extortion, hijackings and other forms of terrorism along with destroying priceless historical treasures that don't agree with their narrow religious views, all to compel people to live by their own creed, as is done by various Islamic terrorist groups around the world, from Boko Haram, Al Shabab and others in Africa to the Taliban in Afghanistan to those who want to teach a lesson to those they think interfere in the countries they want to control, as the Al Qaeda bombings of the New York Twin Towers and attempted bombing of the White House and attacks on transport systems in Europe on 7/7.
Yet, Islam is the religion of some of the greatest mystical literature and literature of love in existence, the religion of a banking system centred on kindliness to clients, if I understand that well enough.
What is wrong?
Others are moving beyond such atavisms and anti-female orientations as are evident in the Taliban and perhaps still in Saudi, but in Islam, glaring examples of both official and renegade actors, terrorist groups persist in pursuing inhuman forms of religion.
Why? Why such atavism?
Thanks
Toyin
On Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 05:47 Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu> wrote:
Motivation at this time?For the last 50 years I have keptmy eyes and ears open for criticismof various religions with no exceptionwhatsoever.
No I did not compile this. It musthave been a tedious job for the compilerlisted. I note though that quite a fewScholars of religion have focused onrelated issues.
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2022 12:42 PM
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Atrocities/war crimes condoned in the BiblePlease be cautious: **External Email**
thanks Gloria.
did you compile this?
could i know what motivated your interest in this at this time?
toyin
On Tue, 11 Jan 2022 at 07:54, 'Emeagwali, Gloria (History)' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:
On Jan 12, 2022 05:47, "Emeagwali, Gloria (History)" <emeagwali@ccsu.edu> wrote:
Motivation at this time?For the last 50 years I have keptmy eyes and ears open for criticismof various religions with no exceptionwhatsoever.
No I did not compile this. It musthave been a tedious job for the compilerlisted. I note though that quite a fewScholars of religion have focused onrelated issues.
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2022 12:42 PM
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Atrocities/war crimes condoned in the BiblePlease be cautious: **External Email**
thanks Gloria.
did you compile this?
could i know what motivated your interest in this at this time?
toyin
On Tue, 11 Jan 2022 at 07:54, 'Emeagwali, Gloria (History)' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:
No comments:
Post a Comment