Toyin Falola and the Orunmila Paradigm: Transdisciplinary Aspirations in African Bodies of Thought

 

 

                                               Explorers of Ifa in conclave

  at the Toyin Falola interview with Ifayemi Elebuibon, top left, Toyin Falola, top right 

                                                 and Oluseyi Atanda, bottom     

  

                                                            Abstract

An interpretation of the work and professional life of scholar and writer Toyin Falola in terms of the Yoruba Ifa system of knowledge and divination and in relation to an individualistic selection of some of the world's greatest creatives across history. 

 The Orunmila Paradigm and Toyin Falola's Work

The Orunmila Paradigm is an aspiration to totalistic knowledge of human and terrestrial existence in its intersection with the cosmos understood in material and non-material terms, within a sensitivity to dynamism, to the unexpected, the unanticipated and the unknown. 

It is represented by the circular structure of the opon ifa, a central symbolic form and instrument of the Ifa system of knowledge particularly vigorously developed in Nigeria's Yorubaland, in which the opon's circularity evokes the aspiration to comprehensive understanding and the face at the top and perhaps sides of the structure stands for the indeterminate, the unexpected and the unknown, primary qualities in the quest for knowledge, qualities symbolized by the Yoruba Orisha cosmology deity Eshu.

The multivalent productivity of the scholar and writer Toyin Falola is useful as a means of developing these ideas, on account of  similarities between the scope of Falola's work in its subjects and methods, and the range of reference and of cognitive methods in Ifa, within the shared contexts of Falola's creativity and Ifa as epistemic activities within African contexts, in which,  with Ifa,  this African, and specifically Yoruba and Edo cultural frame  speaks to a global and cosmic scope of concerns.

Ifa as a Multicognitive Knowledge System 

How best may the unity in variety of the universe be appreciated? Through intellect, imagination, the senses, intuition or revelation or a combination of these?

Ifa operates through the convergence of these possibilities. It organises its knowledge in terms of the intellectual order represented by mathematics but encodes this knowledge in the imaginative form of literature, evokes the senses, through the visual symbolism of its instruments, such as the opon ifa,  and through the visual and auditory force of its oral performance, seeking knowledge beyond the intellect or the senses, aspiring to mobilize intuition and revelation in responding to the perplexities of human existence.

Between Imagination and Intellect in Falola's Creativity 

Central to Falola's work is its imaginative dimension, represented by his poetry and its mobilization in relation to the mapping of human experience, demonstrated by his poetic lament ''For Clara Adeyemi'',  his correlation of poetry and intellectual exposition in his essay ''Jacob Festus Ade Ajayi, 1929-2014: Our Foundation, Our Mainframe, and Our Roof'' and the imaginative force of his  autobiographical narratives A Mouth Sweeter than Salt and Counting the Tiger's Teeth, particularly his depiction of his mentor, the magical herbalist Iya Lekuleja, these examples being the best demonstrations known to me of his imaginative capacities and the Ade Ajayi essay being the best demonstration I know of the  union of the imaginative and the intellectual in his writing.

Orisha Cosmology and Human and Natural Possibility 

Orunmila is a central deity or orisha,  of the Ifa system of knowledge and divination, an orisha representing the wisdom through which the cosmos was created, and therefore, insight into the permutations of human existence enabled by its grounding within those primordial parameters, an orisha described as creator of Ifa for the purpose of seeking such insights.

Yoruba Orisha cosmology reflects the possibilities of humanity and nature, expressed in terms of deities, as one may understand  Akinwumi Ogundiran's interpretation  in The Yoruba: A New History. Along such lines, one could correlate exemplary achievers with orisha images in order to better frame the accomplishments of these achievers, a process similar to that of Harold Bloom in Genius, in which various great writers in the Western tradition are explored in terms of the sephiroth, the primary constellations of cosmic possibility in the Jewish cosmological system Kabbalah, and  depictions of contemporary personas as bodhisattvas, exemplars of the union of wisdom and compassion perceived as both cosmic and human qualities in Buddhism.

Seekers of Infinity

''Obirikiti, the infinite circle'', Orunmila is described, as translated by Rowland Abiodun in Yoruba Art and Language. I am a seeker of the circle of completeness defining existence and Falola's journeys in seeking to construct or understand that circle inspire me as to what is possible, as his work intersects with those of other creatives, particularly seekers after such breadth of understanding, from deliberately  totalizing efforts to more episodic yet ultimately unficatory activities, such as those represented by Falola's diverse oeuvre.

These intersectors range from the  great 20th century  US science fiction writer and scholar in various disciplines, Isaac Asimov, to the ancient Greek scholar Aristotle,  creator  of disciplines or a constructor of them into  definitive forms, integrating them in terms of their methods and place within a cohesive understanding of the universe, Ibn Sina, Arab medical scholar and philosopher, among other creativities and Ibn Arabi, Arab poet and thinker.

Beyond these masters of  verbal thought, within the firmament of human achievement in all fields across time and space, are such figures as the Florentine Renaissance multidisciplinary genius Michelangelo Buonarotti, famous for his many awesome sculptures, paintings, and architecture and Leonardo da Vinci,  renowned for his paintings, regarded as highlights of Western art,  and his amazing and futuristic scientific work, these figures provoking questions of  correlative configurations of creative possibility  in other disciplines, defining uniquely what others have also done, as with Michelangelo's  and Leonardo's art, and demonstrating what others are not able to do, as with Leonardo's science.

Comparing the Greatest Creatives 

When a person dedicates their life  to climbing mountains, they will be compared with other mountain climbers who have also been so dedicated.   Such comparisons are unavoidable in human achievement, particularly at its highest reaches, which define and redefine the nature of human possibility.

How high are the mountains they climbed, what kinds of challenges did they surmount and how did they meet those challenges?  

How may one compare the achievement of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, for example,  the first people to climb to the summit of Everest, the world's highest mountain, with that of Reinhold Messner, the first person to climb it alone and without oxygen equipment to make up for oxygen deprivation at such high altitudes? 

Falola in Context 

Falola is best compared with the most prolific writers and thinkers in history in all fields.  

Is he more prolific than them?  

How does he measure up to them in terms of quality of production and impact, allowing for the fact that some of those others have had more time to be appreciated and influence others? 

 In making such comparisons,one would also need to examine the variety of his productions - poetry, essays and books, autobiographies, scholarly texts.  

How does his work compare with that of others who are less prolific?  

     Nimi Wariboko 

Theologian, philosopher and economist Nimi Wariboko, for example, though very prolific, has only a fraction of Falola's productivity but in terms of density of ideas, I get the impression he's much more powerful than Falola, while his acknowledgements pages are wonderfully poetic.  

But on account of Falola's sheer expressive range, across various genres, he enters a world of his own, where expressive  versatility and ideational range cohere in creating something unique. 

       Akinwumi Ogundiran

I doubt if his book on Yoruba history with Aribidesi Usman, if I recall the subject of the book adequately,which came out at about the same time as Ogundiran's The Yoruba:A New History, is anywhere near as powerful as Ogundiran's book, defined by superb narrative power integrating Yoruba proverbs within sparkling English, ideational ambition and structural scope, but Ogundiran's book is the kind that if a person is able to produce two like that,  in one lifetime, it would be awesome.  

     Abiola Irele and Olabiyi Yai

I am yet to read most of Falola's books including his early book on Ibadan, described by one view as his best work, powerfully multidisciplinary.  Abiola Irele and Olabiyi Yai, whose work is also deeply illuminating of Yoruba culture, in particular, and African cultures, in general,  deeply penetrate their subjects, while transcending these subjects and the contexts from which they emerge, conjuncting various interpretive windows, distinctively unifying intellectual muscularity with imaginative lyricism.

These scholars are uniquely powerful multidisciplinary thinkers, their originality and power of ideational construction  perhaps unmatched by Falola's work I've read so far, and even if so matched, unsuperseded by Falola's creativities.  However, Falola's greater disciplinary range and more expansive engagement with the various angles of approach to African Studies makes his work into a framework subsuming and helping to better appreciate the work of other scholars in the field.

His work demonstrates a combination of  possibilities most  scholars in the field have not explored, a distintinctive conjunction of engagements with the most current issues in the humanities and social sciences as these relate to African Studies.

He is able, at times, to place an individualistic stamp on a  subject he explores, a stamp of such creative force it provokes the question of whether his exploration of the subject can  be eclipsed even by yet unanticipatable developments in the fields in question, as perhaps achieved in ''Ritual Archives'' and in Decolonizing African Knowledge: Autoethnography and African Epistemologies.

    Isaac Asimov 

Falola's literary works are not of the same power as that of Asimov, one of the giants of science fiction, and Asimov's disciplinary range is likely to be broader in general terms, encompassing the humanities, social sciences and science, he being a science professor.

I doubt, though,  if Asimov's non-fiction, impressive as it is, aspires to go beyond  explanations to a general audience to the comprehensive mappings of fields of knowledge, and at times, expanding knowledge in those fields, aspirations characterizing Falola's work, comparisons which,  since Asimov did not collaborate with others in his writings, as far as I know, consider only Falola's sole written works, excluding his co-written and edited works, a library of their own.

     Aristotle

Aristotle was a creator  of disciplines or a constructor of them into a definitive form, a strategy Falola has only recently begun to suggest in such essays as "Ritual Archives". His suggestions about discipline construction in that essay approach that could reach a foundationalist achievement of Aristotle's kind, integrating a discipline in terms of it's methods and place within a cohesive understanding of the universe, as each discipline he worked on may be understood in the context of Aristotle's project as a whole, but such an achievement, thinking through issues of epistemology in relation to methods in research and expression, in the context of metaphysics, though perhaps possible with patience and time, could imply the equivalent of developing another level of cognitive identity beyond what Falola has generated so far, awesome as that is.

So, while one concedes Aristotle's prolificity and  novelty in developing systems of knowledge, creating or consolidating disciplines foundational to the Western intellectual tradition and it's impact across the world, one may observe Falola's greater expressive and cultural range, since Aristotle was neither poet nor autobiographer,  and though Falola's disciplinary scope does not cross over from the humanities and the social sciences he broadly shares with Aristotle,  into science, where Aristotle's achievement is historic, from physics to biology,  though at times superseded or corrected, one could reference Falola's greater cultural range, across African and Western cultures, while Aristotle is focused on Western thought.

Strategies of Scholarly and Scribal Creativity Exemplified by Falola

How may one emulate such masters, striving to justify one's existence by maximally transforming possibility into actuality, particularly in the creation of knowledge?

One could model, in one's own way, the approaches through which Falola, the man from Ibadan, the war camp turned metropolis, scion of the man from Igeti hill, Orunmila, the small man with a head full of wisdom,  transmutes raw materials into a universe:

Time management. He organizes his work life in terms of projects in progress, completed projects and projects to be published. The books for publication next year are already with the publishers. Those for the years after are either being composed now or are incubating after completion, awaiting reworking with freshly enlightened eyes.

 

He has worked out the optimum conditions for his creativity, avoiding situations that won't help it. He has resolved, he once stated, to do no other job apart from academia. Hence he migrated to the US from Nigeria, where he was shaped but whose society  could not sustain him after the emergence of escalating economic and social inadequacies in the 80s.

From the then University of Ife, where he built his foundations, but which may  have become too limited for him after the decline of the university from its role as a global centre in African Studies,  he moved to the University of Texas, that university and its country being socio-economic and academic environments that can adequately empower him, though ironically at some distance from the continent where he was formed and which is the subject of his work,  a distance partly bridged through human and textual mediation  and regular visits to the continent. 

An eagle can't fly high if it has weights on its feet. To create the conditions that will facilitate the emergence of a Falola in any socio-economic system, certain structural configurations must be achieved. If those conditions don’t exist in the larger environment, an aspirant has to create the necessary conditions for themselves.

He is constantly writing and is not afraid of not being at his best always, preferring to keep working, polishing what emerges and expanding it, up to a point of readiness for publication, readiness which is not to be equated with absolute perfection, perfection being understood as more of a process than a destination.

Hence it might not be difficult to see how some of Falola's books could be better if the subject were approached differently and the work incubated over a longer period of time, but the author has demonstrated his capacity at the time of writing, laying seeds for later possibilities from others or even himself, rather than trying to actualize something he might not be ready to do at that time.

 

He has a stable home and stable finances and avoids disruptions in those zones.

 

He cuts out distractions to his vision of being an unelected or unappointed virtual academic institution builder, staying away from such academic responsibilities as head of department, Dean or President or VC, preferring to focus on his self-initiated efforts.

 

He works very well with teams that facilitate his work. He is good at getting stimulation from others through asking them to give feedback on his work, to edit his work or to comment on his ideas.

 

He is a great collaborator. He excels in bringing people together to work on projects,  particularly book projects. Thus, without using conventional institutional structures, he has built a virtual institution of collaborative productions.

 

He studies and promotes the work of other scholars and creatives. Falola's work can be divided, among other possible categorizations, into those focusing on people and those centred on other issues.Those directed at studying people's work can be further split into those exploring himself and those projecting others.

 

Those concentrating  on himself are his autobiographies, and hybrid texts which zone in on himself within the context of a larger body of study, such as his essay "From Stroke to Stone"  and his goal in  Decolonizing African Knowledge: Autoethnography and African Epistemologies.

 

The productions primarily directed at studying others' work are essays, books and the Toyin Falola Interviews series, such as his essay with Uyilawa Usuanlele on the Benin historian Jacob Egharevba, sole written books on such scholars as Ogbu Kalu and Farooq Kperogi and edited books on others, as on Nimi Wariboko and the artist Victor Ekpuk, along with such a sole written essay collection as In Praise of Greatness.

The Toyin Falola Interviews,  internationally attended video events,  are conducted and archived online as open access material, extending Falola's  scholarly media from written texts to online video productions, thereby significantly expanding the audience for his work. 

 

Falola is constantly generating book projects and approaching publishers with them. Publishers need books to publish. Falola constantly generates long running book project ideas and pitches them to publishers.

 

Hence he edits book series from Palgrave to Cambridge and he makes sure he delivers them, also contributing his own books, at times sole written and other times co-edited and sole edited. A lot of organizational capacity is deployed to enable this to happen. 

 

In sum, his achievement and those of other creatives represents a Webster's dictionary description of ''vocation'' as ''the orientation of a person's life and work in terms of their ultimate sense of mission''.

 

That balance between work, income, passion and ultimate purpose is one of humanity's supreme challenges, no system being developed yet to enable it for everyone, the greatest achievers being some of those who have reached this convergence of possibilities. 

What may be deduced and perhaps confirmed by Falola about his style of working is a system of creativity that people can be guided to adapt to themselves in various fields of endeavour. It can  perhaps even  be used as  the basis of a university educational system emphasising multi-disciplinarity of subject exploration and multi-expressive competence through intellectual and artistic expression.

Such an ideal is represented particularly by Plato in the Western tradition, in Nigeria by  Odia Ofeimun, Wole Soyinka, the scholars of the Nsukka school of art such as Uche Okeke, Obiora Udechukwu, Olu Oguibe, and others beyond Nsukka such as Dele Jegede and Moyo Okediji.  

 Also published on

Linkedin

Facebook

Also