Thoroughly stimulating discussion.
In the SOAS MA thesis, I used the Ifa divination process from Yoruba thought and practice, in relation to Western autobiographical theory, in exploring the art and letters of the Dutch/French artist Vincent van Gogh in their autobiographical and philosophical range.
-- Please forgive my sharing here reflections the discussion brings to my mind, helping me better map than I have done before now aspects of my experience and knowledge.
Love of Theory
I love theory. I delight in the elevations they enable, akin to flying at a great height across a landscape of possibilities, grasping their significance in terms of ideational patterns. Making me feel like a wizard traversing the time stream unifying the present with the past and the future.
I also thoroughly enjoy phenomenonigical enquiry, which I understand as lived experience and it's interpretive potential.
I would be pleased to be better educated about that term since I'm still trying to better understand such terms as "phenomenology" and "hermeneutics".
I identify with Moses on using theory with integrity, on using theory creatively, on theory construction as a skill a researcher so inclined should cultivate, on being sensitive to negativities of theory and on centring Africa inspired theory although I also enjoy learning about and using theory from anywhere as part of my participation in the kaleidoscope of human creativity.
My Adventures with Theory
My adventures with theory range across my various academic programs and continue today.
Kent and SOAS MAs
We studied theory in my Nigerian BA and MA and I tried to develop myself as a theorist there, but my explorations in studying and constructing theory began in earnest at the University of Kent and at SOAS.
This was represented by the cosmogeographic conception, the correlation of geography and cosmology, I developed for one of my Kent courses in comparing Susanne Wenger and her team's' reshaping of the Oshun forest in Nigeria into a map of Yoruba Orisha cosmology through sculpture and architecture and Katherine Maltwood's interpretation of the Glastonbury landscape in England in terms of astrological symbolism.
For the Kent MA thesis, I discussed the Yoruba cosmology deity Eshu in relation to spatial navigation, Eshu being associated with the intersections of physical and spiritual space, ideas I used in exploring the interpretive possibilities of the London Underground in relation to the intersections represented by its train stations, in comparison with the motif of spatial intersections and intersections of life's possibilities in Italian writer Italo Calvino's novel Invisible Cities.
In the SOAS MA thesis, I used the Ifa divination process from Yoruba thought and practice, in relation to Western autobiographical theory, in exploring the art and letters of the Dutch/French artist Vincent van Gogh in their autobiographical and philosophical range.
My vision was that of demonstrating the intercultural power of theory, of philosophical perspectives developed from classical African thought in dialogue with other bodies of knowledge, a synergy valid for interpreting phenomena across space and time.
SOAS/UCL PhD
For the SOAS/UCL PhD, I wanted to do something more ambitious than I had done before, to transpose the Ifa divination process to the interpretation of space, particularly sacred space represented by the cosmological vision represented the work of Wenger and her team at the Oshun forest.
The Oshun forest/Ifa theorization, however,took me years to arrive at, as different from the mechanical, initial efforts I had tried to fit my on-site exploration of the forest and interpretation of its symbolism into.
I eventually arrived at the symbolism of the chameleon, as developed from Yoruba thought and that of the Malian Africanist Ahamadou Hampate Ba, moving through the forest as it seems to change it's colour in blending with it's environment, as the most fitting means of integrating the physical and interpretive exploration of the Oshun forest and the relationship of this spatial and interpretive navigation to the more abstract nature of Ifa divination as a means of navigating spaces of possiblity at the intersection of material and spiritual space.
By that time, fatigue had set in on the part of myself and my supervisors and I could not find the interpretive power or interest to bring all the work done together, particularly as mentally and emotionally,my energies were no longer as focused as before and the supervisors were no longer interested.
Moving Forward
That theory was the perhaps the most African centred of all those I developed in those programs.
With time, I understand it better and hopefully will take it up again and complete the project, particularly since I'm increasingly exposed to theorizing on Ifa, including from Facebook posts and discussions, some of which I've used in a recent essay, self published online and others I shall be compiling and publishing in the sane way.
Nimi Wariboko as Theorist
An Africa centred scholar who loves theorizing and does it very well, describing himself on his faculty page as a person who folds, unfolds and refolds theory, if I recall that clearly enough, is Nimi Wariboko, as demonstrated even by his book reviews, along with his books.
His imagistic interpretation of the relationship between human body and spatial form, between the Ooni of Ife and the City of Ife, between the ruler and the cosmological values of the city, in his review of Jacob Olupona's City of 201 Gods: Ile Ife in Time, Space and Imagination, adds an extra dimension to the book, rather than simply summing up and assessing it.
His description of the nature of Ifa in his review of Olupona and Rowland Abiodun's edited book on Ifa is one of the best short summations of Ifa known to me, along with that by Karen Barber.
In The Pentecostal Principle, he develops a Pentecostal version of Paul Tillich's Protestant Principle of the dialectic between institutional and ideational consolidation and dynamism, enriched by Wariboko's intimate, lived understanding of the Pentecostal drive towards spiritual dynamism, but which, ironically, may be seen as another version of the struggle between Catholicism and Pentecostalism, which itself may be seen as a version of the struggle between Jesus and the Pharisees, a fundamental dynamic in religious history the Pentecostal movement in Nigeria is also struggling with.
His Nigerian Pentecostalism, in it's trenchant exploration of Pentecostal epistemology and metaphysics, in dialogue with those of the Kalabari, is wonderful in explicating what one would understand as rhythms between Yoruba, Igbo, Kalabari and perhaps all others in Nigeria's South and certainly evident, in different ways across cultures of embodied yet expansive vision, in which the human being is understood as capable of perceiving both physical and spiritual universes in their entwining, a discussion on embodied expanded epistemologies in relation to multiverse metaphysics, if one may put it that way, which Wariboko pursues across various books.
thanks
Toyin
On Sun, Sep 24, 2023, 4:38 PM Toyin Falola <toyin.falola53@gmail.com> wrote:
--This is not what I was told, unfortunately.
I was told that a thesis must follow a prescribed structure.
I think our colleagues in Africa have to talk so that it does not become the regular trope: diasporan scholars--- which is a way of shutting down a debate.
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