Visual Configurations and Projections of Self between the Mythic and the Everyday
Part 4
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Abstract
This essay examines the immediate and more distant yet strikingly illuminating implications of the use, in his books and memorabilia of him, of artistic images of polymathic scholar, writer and institutional organizer Toyin Falola, exploring these images within an intercultural context, generating a global nexus in relation to their proximate African frameworks.
The essay initiates what is likely to be a new field of study, Falola iconography, the study of values relating to images of Toyin Falola, part of Falola Studies, the investigation of the life and work of the scholar, writer and academic entrepreneur.
I have identified the artists responsible for the images when I could get their names from the books.
Falola and the Open Circle of African History
The same image as that in front of the bag given to conference attendees at the conference to mark his sixty-fifth birthday in 2018, may be used in rounding off this cycle of images. This image, with a slight variation in the rendition of Falola's face, as the eyes seem to twinkle with delight, was used for the poster for the same conference, the difference in the eyes likely due to issues of printing on the different materials used for the poster, on one hand, and the conference bag, on the other.
The delightfully smiling face suggests a sense of exaltation in the conference theme, African Knowledges and Alternative Futures, in relation to the constellation of African possibilities visualized by the semi-circle of images on the poster, images in which Falola's face is part of the line of continuity. My earlier comment on this poster from "Conference Review: Toyin Falola@65 Conference: African Knowledges and Alternative Futures" is useful here:
Conference Poster
Framing the entire universe of discourse I was exposed to at the conference, from scintillating books on display in different disciplines, to various formal and informal discussions to the festivities represented by pageantry, food and dance, was the symbolic contextualization of the event by the symbolism of the conference poster, drawing on central evocators of classical African achievement, in tandem with imagery suggesting the expansion of scholarship in Africa through the colonialists' introduction of printed texts to the continent, juxtaposed with a colourful array of logos being the insignia of the various organizations who contributed to making the conference possible, the entire visual feast of the poster suggesting the character of this conference as a gathering of Africans and non-Africans, from Europe and the Americas, coming together to investigate Africa's place in the global configuration of knowledge, of knowledge as abstract inspiration and its potential for practical application.
The conference poster projects Falola's scholarly range and vocational flexibility in terms of symbols constituting a map of Africa in which is embedded a triumphant portrait of the scholar. The poster also evokes the institutional reach of his influence through a global listing of sponsors of the conference through their logos as well as stating the royal and academic figures and personages from the Oyo state government, the state of which Ibadan [ where the conference held ] is the capital, who were to grace the conference.
At the top of this visual configuration was an image of a bird looking back over its elegantly displayed tail feathers. That is the Sankofa symbol of the Ghanaian origin Adinkra system of knowledge, in which philosophical ideas are expressed through visual symbols. The bird represents the need to critically examine the past in order to better appreciate the present and the future.
It thereby dramatizes the exploration of the deposit of knowledge represented by classical African thought, in tandem with other bodies of knowledge, represented by Falola's pluralistic epistemology.
The Sankofa symbol also evokes Falola's vocation as an historian, a student of the past and its relationship to the present, particularly one who integrates the study of the historiography, conceptions of the nature of history and of how it may be studied, developed in classical African cultures, with historiographic thought from other cultures, such as that made available in the Western academy, from Herodotus to Carr and beyond, evoking foundational figures in Western historiography from ancient Greece to the twentieth century, as well African historiographic thought, from the Yoruba distinction between forms of knowledge represented by imo, knowledge and gbabo, hearsay, and therefore of the basis for ascribing factuality to historical accounts reflected in Yoruba conceptions of itàn, narrative, and the griotic traditions of Guinea mediated through the recitation of the griot Babu Conde presented by Camara Laye in Guardians of the Word, among other ideas and traditions from Africa and the globe.
To the right of the Sankofa symbol is a representation of the majestic forms of the pyramids of Egypt, visualizing one of the greatest feats of imagination and engineering ever constructed, its mode of creation at such a level of perfection and grandeur still a mystery.
To the left of the Sankofa bird is an abstract form that may evoke a camel, a primary means of transport in North Africa, thus suggesting the traffic of populations through which ideas, creativity and other possibilities move across Africa and between Africa and the world.
Shaping the bottom of the image is a portrait from Nigeria's Ife, representing a sculptural form that is famous as one of humanity's most powerful depictions of the human face, one of its most sublime evocations of idealized humanity.
The image sequence constitutes a semi-circle, the open space thereby generated in the curving line suggesting the potential for unanticipated creative possibilities.
Thus, the image at the centre of the conference poster dramatizes Toyin Falola's mobility of subjects, of disciplines and of geography as he grapples with exploring and configuring Africa through his scholarship.
Inspirational Possibilities of Falola Iconography
The associative possibilities of the images being considered here, therefore, run the gamut from the material to the abstract, from concrete depictions to abstract associations, from the individual to society to nature, terrestrial and cosmic.
The total sequence of Falola artistic images is of a heroic figure, an Atlas like personage, akin to the ancient Greek mythic figure who supported the world on his shoulders, as in the image of Falola holding Nigeria aloft on his shoulders on the cover of Understanding Nigeria, a traveller between dimensions, a sage storyteller addressing eager children, an elegant market trader, an embodiment of multiple streams of knowledge, a cyberspace navigator, a weaver of words of rhetorical power and penetrating wisdom, a person who delights in his vocation as thinker, scholar and writer, delighting himself by visually locating himself within the discursive worlds constructed by his writings.
Is this an egotistical or a realistic effort? Is this self idealization or factual self description? To what degree is it truthful or aspirational? To what degree is it imaginative and to what degree is it historical?
What may be the implications of these images for people beyond simply analyzing their associative values, as I have done?
They may be useful as contemplative tools, means of focusing aspirations, techniques of concretizing ideals, concentrations of values in terms of visual catalysts that may be invoked to focus aspiration, motivate the person contemplating them, uplifting the contemplative in emotionally dry moments, in difficult times.
The contemplative may employ the Falola visualization, use the memory of any other personage that suits them or visualize their own selves in those scenarios.
A meditation technique in Tibetan Buddhism involves visualizing one or more of the multiple, diverse forms in terms of which the Buddha has been reworked in the course of Buddhist history, these Buddhas becoming embodiments of particular qualities vital for achieving the ultimate goals of knowledge defining the Buddhist vision.
On one's left, for example, as described in Kawa Samdup's translated and W.Y. Evans Wentz' edited Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa, could be visualized the Buddha Akshobhya, the Buddha of the eastern direction, evoking possibly the consistency of focus through which one reaches enlightenment about the meaning of existence.
Other Buddha figures could be visualized on the four sides of one's body as representing the four sides of space and a particular quality embodied by a particular Buddha. Rather than Buddha figures, or deity or angelic figures, as a similar technique is deployed in such Western magical texts as Israel Regardies edited The Golden Dawn, one also could employ historical figures, images representing one's ideals, as suggested by the Falola visualization.
The aspirant, as in the Buddhist, Hindu and Western magical visualization techniques, may imagine the inspirational figure within an inspiring space. They may simply contemplate this image complex or move on to imagine themselves as merging with the figure, as Falola also does in his visualization of the Yoruba origin Orisha tradition deity Eshu in his essay "Ritual Archives" in The Toyin Falola Reader.
In adapting these contemplative techniques to reflecting on a fellow human being, particularly a living person, one who has not crossed the threshold to being viewed in immortal terms, the goal may be more attuned to exemplification than deification, catalyzing one's imaginative powers by identification with what one admires, assimilating it imaginatively to oneself to take root in the subconscious, fructifying continuously, facilitating crossing the threshold from aspiration to achievement.
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