What is the Value of Your Scholarly Work?
Have You Done Your Best?
How Do You Compare to Others in Your Field and the World of Scholarship Generally?
Show Us Your Three Most Significant Publications
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
I did not take long to arrive at the answer- two papers written in 2004/2005 and one written in 2017.
I was humbled by the experience.
I have been writing and publishing since 2003, both in scholarly journals and books and self publishing online, and two of the papers I considered my best were written for my MA programs at the University of Kent and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, about twenty years ago and another written a year after I had just returned to Nigeria about seven years ago.
Can I write another paper like the 2017 one again now?
I wonder. It came effortlessly, fed by the transdisciplinary inspiration of the Cambridge UK public lectures landscape and of the cognitive force of the university's architecture at the intersection of science and art, which I used in the essay on Irele, "Abiola Irele at the Confluence of Disciplines".
The memory of those experiences are certainly not as sharp as they used to be
The other two papers represent my bursting loose through the creative freedom of UK education, where I was enabled to do things I had long dreamt of but had been unable to do In my Nigerian university, a limitation lifted by my entering UK education in 2003.
Could I write papers like those now?
One of them was a study of relationships between aspects of navigation, from the spatial to the cosmological, through a comparative study of Yoruba origin Ifa hermeneutics, Italian writer Italo Calvino's novel Invisible Cities, a precious battered copy of which I had bought in Oba market in Benin-City before leaving for England and aspects of the philosophy of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger.
The central navigational context that fed the essay was my encounter with the London Underground train system, which deeply fascinated me.
Not having lived in London for most of my time in the UK even though my foundational Inspirational experience of spatial navigation was walking the streets of Benin-City, an experience I'm yet to publish about, the impact of the London experience that fed the essay has lost its sharp edges.
The only essay of the three less dependent on environmental context is the one exploring the life and writings of the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh through Ifa hermeneutics in relation to autobiographical theory, but without being introduced to autobiographical theory at the University of Kent could I have written that essay?
Questionable.But can such a gap not be filled through reading?
I salute those universities and lecturers who permitted and contributed to inspiring those works.
I had another epiphanic experience in about 2008, trying to unify fantasy story telling and critical analysis of the Ghanaian visual art symbol system, Adinkra, but the book length manuscript I wrote on that did not make progress partly because my University College London supervisor saw such a meshing of imaginary storytelling and critical thought as having no place in scholarship, well before UCL was able to develop graduate programs along such lines.
I shall be revising and publishing that work moving forward.
What motivates a person to do the best of what they are capable, in any field?
A good number of my essays write themselves through me as well as being written by me.
They haunt me until I have to give birth to them and give me no rest until they emerge in all their configurations, like a fully formed child.
I've not been able to adjust to academia and its necessity of publishing in academic fora, but I try to do my best even in self publishing, which is how most of my works are published, the journal and book publications often emerging more by accident than by design.
I therefore do not get the professional-economic and social rewards academics do for their work, rewards I appreciate having once been an academic.
I'm also not able to bring myself to aspire to make money from my work, to seek recognition through it or appreciation of it.
Why am I that way?
I dont know.
But my creativity is predicated upon operating in terms of those parameters.
For the application, I had to submit my CV.
How does one present a CV in which most of the publications are self published, and even then, are composed significantly by essays on social media, such as Facebook and essays in email format for such list serves as the USAAfrica Dialogues Series Good group?
You do your best beceause those publications-yes, they are publications- represent you stretching yourself at near maximum or maximum cognitive, often transdisciplinary capacity, creating new structures out of existing knowledge systems, my internal assessor concluded.
Compile the links, introduce them and let the assessors make up their mind, I. was guided.
The essence of scholarly publication is its evidence that scholarly work has been produced.
All other parameters, though valuable, such as peer review and quality of medium of publication are complementary to that invariable reality -" show us the evidence".
Another fellowship I'm considering requires the applicant to have a PhD, which I dont have, not having been able to get one at the University of Benin and later at UCL, due to what may be generously summed up as restlessness.
An applicant without a PhD, may, however, present evidence of equivalent research experience.
I did, using my CV evidencing a blend of self publishing, mostly on social media and book and journal publications, some of the latter being very good ones, in my view, but in the minority.
The assessors wrote back that, having examined the CV they considered me to have commensurate research experience to a PhD.
How would one find referees willing to support one in those applications, knowing one's unconventional scholarly profile?
Professor Michael Afolayan and Professor Nimi Wariboko, whom I had met on the USAAfrica Dialogues Series Google group happily performed that role, even though their scholarly careers, as academics, are very different from mine as what I would call a largely social media based scholar.
Whatever one's capacities or achievements may be, in certain contexts, one needs other humans to publicly attest to those achievements, as these gentlemen have done.
Whatever one's capacity, one also needs opportunities to exercise those potentials.
Toyin Falola's USAAfrica Dialogues Series Google group has proven a most welcoming publishing platform after my earlier focus on on blogging and later on Facebook, a good number of my most important follow up opportunities having come through that group.
The founder and moderator, Toyin Falola, runs the group without pettiness and negative personalization, an ideal context not always evident in online groups.
I also thank all those who made the Internet possible. Without them such a career as mine would not exist.
What of those people who funded those expensive UK graduate programs in three universities, to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds, every kobo sent from their business in Nigeria, my mum's horticulture business which she started at the back of our house in Benin, and, which, with the help of my two sisters, has grown to operate in different parts of the country?
They badly want their brother and son to have a PhD and to become a professor but he says he has lost interest in such aspirations, preferring to work alone according to his own lights.
The psychological pain and puzzlement they have suffered on account of this brother and son's unconventional path, seen by some as indicating no fruit for the millions of naira poured into it, is difficult to imagine.
But gradually, we might be approaching the end of the tunnel.
Will I be able to get recognition and support while I pursue my current goal of documenting, mapping and discussing classical African sacred spaces?
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAGBtzfNm%3Dr7m8anXgVv9LhEMD8_BPDxrLNZHzFgHhbhX8-LM2w%40mail.gmail.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment