Good evening Toyin,
Thank you, thank you, and thank you so very much for this. I appreciate it. As I was editing my twelfth book, it dawned on me that most of the works I have quoted are by non-African scholars.
Ironically, even the African-educated and African-based scholars cite mostly European and North American scholars. This is especially so in terms of theoretical frameworks. A week earlier, this anomaly formed part of the discussion I had with a senior scholar in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
And moments before I posted my call-for-help, I was chatting with a Nigerian scholar based in Canada and this issue also came up. It was at that point that I knew I had to ask for help, for direction.
I am a generalist in terms of my research and writing. However, Africa features prominently in my scholarship. So, I would like to introduce my readers to scholars from our part of the world. In addition, I would like to – beginning in spring 2023 – incorporate African-centric theories into my writings and classroom activities.
Scholars, here and at the ASRF forum, have recommended a total of twelve books/articles. I will add to my list of must-buy Prof. Toyin Falola's "The Toyin Falola Reader on African Culture, Nationalism, Development," and "Epistemologies, and Decolonizing African Studies: Knowledge Production, Agency."
I had hoped to spend my summer holiday in my village deep in the creeks of the Niger Delta. I guess I will have to drag several books and journal articles with me.
Again, thanks for coming to my rescue. Stay safe, stay well, and have a great week.
Best regards,
Sabella
On Wed, Mar 2, 2022 at 12:23 AM Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com> wrote:
--Fine one, Sabella.The field you reference is represented by books as well as essays.Some works of the kind you want are also comparative- harmonising Africa-centric theories and non-African theories in the exploration of exclusively African or African and non-African phenomena.Please allow me to use this opportunity in clarifying my own understanding as I respond to your request.I use the terms Africa-centric, Africa-centred and Afro-centric interchangeably, my use of these terms overlapping with Molefi Asante's Afro-centrism, a pioneer in this field.The Nature and Significance of TheoryI understand theory as referring to efforts to provide large scale explanations of phenomena, linking diverse phenomena or varied examples of the same phenomenon, in terms of a unifying body of ideas.Through such efforts at moving between the particular and the general, aspects of existence or existence as a whole are understood in terms of a coherence that makes them particularly meaningful, an understanding of theory relevant across disciplines, even though ideas of meaningfuless might differ between disciplines.One of the great strengths of the Western academy is it's centralisation of theory as continually developing, contested, divergent and convergent approaches to making sense of human existence and its cosmic context.This has often been demonstrated in terms of aspirations to understand reality in it's universal character, a controversial but deeply fertile aspiration even when the universal is understood as largely perceptible through the prism of the local, a modification emerging in the more recent history of the Western academy, as in such a movement as Post-Modernism.All cultures are grounded in theories because without explanatory frameworks, people would not be able to make sense of existence.Complementing biological needs, are psychological needs, at the heart of which is the need to have life make sense, even if in a non-ratiocinative but emotional manner.Making sense of existence in terms of structures of ideas that clarify it's diversity, multiplicity and development constitutes the construction of theory, of which religions and philosophies are the best known examples.Africa-Centric Theory in Action Within and Beyond Africana ContextsAfrican-centric theory can be divided into two main, though overlapping camps, among other classificatory possibilities within or outside this main classification.One camp operates purely within the Africana context, deriving ideas from this framework and applying it to those contexts alone.The other aspires to have these ideas illuminate contexts within and beyond Africa.Toyin Falola's essays "Ritual Archives" and "Pluriversalism", both in the Toyin Falola Reader, their ideas perhaps taken further in Falola's new book Decolonizing African Studies: Knowledge Production, Agency, advocate understanding the approaches to knowledge and the underlying logic of classical African knowledge systems, their epistemologies and metaphysics, and using them as means of exploring human experience in general.This aspiration is complenented by another division within African centred theory, that directed purely at the study of African phenomena, perhaps distilling understanding from African thought, in studying African phenomena alone.Representative of theory derived from African thought and directed purely at African phenomena is Rowland Abiodun's Owe/Oriki theory, a description of Yoruba aesthetics in terms of the correlation of the visual and verbal arts as two aspects of a semiotic whole representing efforts to explore the ultimate sources of existence, bringing these explorations to bear in human life, as demonstrated in his Yoruba Art and Language:Seeking the African in African Art.Esuneutics Within andBeyond Africana ContextsAlso developing an understanding of hermeneutics, theory of interpretation, from Yoruba thought, in relation to the Africana experience, integrating African and African-American contexts, is Henry Luis Gates Jrs The Signifying Monkey, exploring the hermeneutics of Yoruba origin Ifa divination through the prism of the deity Eshu, the central hermeneute of the system.Gates book is itself part of what may be described as the field of Esuneutics, as named by Obododimma Oha in "The Esu Paradigm in the Semiotics of Identity and Community",describing the term as coming from the online literary group Krazitivity, a field the name of which is a counterpoint to the derivativation of the Western term "hermeneutics", theory of interpretation, from the name of Hermes, the ancient Greek messenger deity and interpreter of the messages of the gods, a role also played by the Yoruba origin deity Eshu in his spread from Yorubaland to Benin in Nigeria, perhaps to Dahomey and certainly to the Americas, a deity resonating with such close variants as the Voodoo Papa Legba and the correlative Igbo Agwu, convergences suggesting the possibility of the Eshu motif as a unifying African hermeneutic symbol and idea source.The universal possibilities of the Eshu motif, within and beyond Africana contexts, are demonstrated by my"Spatial Navigation as a Hermeneutic Paradigm: Ifa, Heidegger and Calvino", exploring spatial navigation as a primary human orientation and its relationship to navigating textual space and reality in general, as demonstrated by correlations with ideas on spatial navigation from Western experiential, literary and philosophical contexts, thereby creating a multicultural dialogue suggesting humanity's unity in diversity in terms of spatial navigation in a physical, textual and abstract sense, an approach similar to that employed by Malcolm Allen in describing British psychoanalysis in "Renewal or Retreat?: Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy at the Crossroads".To Be ContinuedThanksToyinOn Mon, Feb 28, 2022, 10:30 Sabella <sabidde@gmail.com> wrote:Dear Colleagues,
I was wondering if anyone here has written a book or can recommend a book that approaches issues and phenomena in and about Africa using African-centric theoretical frameworks. Going forward, I'd like to quote more African scholars in my work and rely more on the theories they originated. Thank you and have a great week.
Cordially,
Sabella
--
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