Dynamic Monumentalities : Toyin Falola’s In Praise of Greatness and its Intercultural Resonance in the Context of Classical Yoruba Hermeneutics

 

Rikki Wemega-Kwawu :

There were people of all walks of life at El Anatsui's opening last week at the Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, and they travelled from all over the world to witness the unveiling of this spellbinding show. There were curators, artists, gallerists, art auctioneers, art collectors, art historians, art writers, museum personnel, general art enthusiasts, family and friends. Among the visitors were even kids.

Here in the photo, a kid confidently strolls through the artist's masterpiece, "Lorgoligi Logarithms," 2018, which plays with the concept of opacity and transparency, and makes a poignant commentary on the vagaries and vicissitudes of life, and the complex, zig-zaggy journey we all have to undertake as humans, hence, the eponymous title, "Lorgorligi Logarithms."

11^th march   2019

“The work consists of 65 individual parts forming a walkable labyrinth. It was created by artist El Anatsui especially for this exhibition at Haus der Kunst and fills the whole centre hall of the East Wing.’’

Abstract

This essay studies Toyin Falola's In Praise of Greatness: The Poetics of African Adulation, a book of biographical portraits and reflections on mortality/immortality, by developing an approach to the study of biography by adapting ideas from classical Yoruba thought. This is correlated with an evaluation of the significance of Falola’s multi-disciplinary achievement exemplified by the book.

 

This effort is best correlated with Falola’s Decolonizing African Knowledge: Autoethnography and African Epistemologies (2022), exploring how Falola’s examination of individual cultural identity may feed broader cultural investigation, but this essay was written well before that book came out and such a correlation would require time I can’t afford now from other projects, preferring to postpone such enquiry to another day.

 

I wonder, though, if the theory of biographical exploration constructed in this essay does not complement that of Decolonizing African Knowledge, suggesting how Falola’s wide ranging and trenchant analysis of Western scholarly complexes that frame his discussion of Yoruba culture in that book may be subsumed by theoretical frameworks developed from Yoruba thought, in dialogue with other African bodies of thought, reaching out to non-African cognitive contexts.

 

Like I try to demonstrate in my ongoing work on Akinwumi Ogundiran’s The Yoruba: A New History, Yoruba thought, creatively interpreted, in dialogue with other ideations from classical African contexts and their later interpreters, is more than capable of carrying the weight of these scholars’ aspirations in developing engines of knowledge, theoretical constructs and analytical ideas, integrating these thinkers' breadth of grounding  in Western theory  within an ideational matrix   inspired by Yoruba philosophy.

Contents

Time, Space, Consciousness, Energy and Oriki                       6

Interpretive Models for a Transdisciplinary Intelligence   13

                  Rhizomatic Intelligence 14

                   Seeds of Possibility         17

                   The Self as Epistemic Matrix   20

      Cognitive Itinerary: Inward, Outward, Internal, External                        

                   The External, Temporal Journey   21

                   The External, Spatial Journey         21

                    The Inward, Mental Journey          21

                    Inner and Outer Landscapes          23

                    Eshu as Summative Image              23

Models of Scholarship: The Falola Network, a Transnational Research and Publication System                                                  25

Polymathic Conjunctions: Aristotle and Falola   26

                      Foundational                                       26

                      Qualification                                         28

                      Contextualization                               29

                     Grounding in Global Cognitive History      30

                     The Paradigmatic Character of the Platonic-Aristotelian

                     Achievement                                         30

                     Relationality of Achievement          32

The Transcendent Inspiration of the Falola Network    34

 

Time, Space, Consciousness, Energy and Oriki

Toyin Falola is a thinker at the intersection of time and consciousness and the creator of an intercontinental research and publication network centred in the global African experience.

His work explores the unfolding of history in terms of the shaping of the human mind by its contexts as well as the configuration of those contexts by human agency. He pursues these initiatives by examining vantage points from which continental African and African Diaspora experience may be viewed in relation to the possibilities enabled by the character of the self within the framework of society.

Falola’s In Praise of Greatness: The Poetics of African Adulation,[1] exemplifies this summation of Falola’s oeuvre in its distillation of the careers of strategic figures in scholarship and art directly relating to African and Diaspora African history, examining their exploration of life’s complex of opportunities.

In Praise of Greatness may be understood as framed by Falola’s reflections on human activity in terms of the matrix constituted by a central verbal genre in Yoruba thought, oriki, a literary form dramatizing a philosophical imperative[2].

Oriki may be described as  the salutation, ki, of the nexus of possibilities represented by  ori, the head, a concept depicting the self as implicit and explicit, obvious and concealed, shaped by the dynamism between the conscious mind and orientations rooted in a depth beyond conventional recollection, encompassing ori lasan,  the physical head understood as a  biological centre of the body,  the enablement of mind in human physicality, a terrestrial identity that is the point of intersection with ori inu, “the inward head”,  the deepest, invisible and immortal aspect of self, the embodiment of the self’s ultimate potential.[3]

Oriki verbalization may be seen as dramatizing  how these convergences play out in the individual’s peregrinations through space and time, a dynamic emerging in the progression of itan, history. These biographical unfoldings intersect with group histories to constitute global history. These correlations of human being are developed in Falola’s book through the lens of individual lives, demonstrating their global reach in terms of a multidisciplinary wealth of knowledge in a canvas composed of the various humanities and social sciences disciplines through which reality may be studied.

This interweaving of the traditional fragmentation of knowledge into its sources in the originary whole of human experience is dramatized  within intricately rich philosophical reflections on the intersection of consciousness and possibility, individuality and circumstance, resonating to the exquisite accents of Yoruba poetry and its English translations, complemented by purely English poetry by the author, a garden of delights in which Falola pays homage largely to people he knows or has known, along with others he has not known but knows about, ranging from his Ibadan origins to Africa to North America, taking in relationships with and accounts of Nigerians of various ethnicities, friendships with and achievements of Africans from various countries and in action across the world, camaraderie with and celebrations of  people from beyond Africa  who are deeply at work on Africa, as the writer muses on time and permanence, on creativity and  transformation, in a text alive with powerful verbal and visual imagery, potent photography, figural and abstract art, its bulk comfortably rested in the ergonomic comfort of the hands as one holds a great book, majestic in its execution, sumptuous in its physical production, a delightful jacket covering its regal bulk, providing entry into  its  richly composed and exquisitely illustrated text, its architectonic construction like a cathedral  rising high into space, its central tower flanked by numerous alcoves, encasements with delightful sculptural  figures showcasing the aspects of the faith represented by the architectural wonder, its monumentality  making its force akin to throwing a big stone into a river, creating large ripples that travel a far distance, a testament to the art of the book as a primary expression of humanity's embodied nature in its efforts to take account of its being and transmit what it learns to the future.

 

The best summation known to me on the approach to humanity represented by this book, comes, incidentally, not from ideas rooted in the book's Yoruba philosophical, artistic and social groundings, but from the cognate Igbo philosophy, as articulated by Chinua Achebe in The Igbo World and its Art:

 

The Igbo world is an arena for the interplay of forces. It is a dynamic world of movement and of flux. ... Ike, energy, is the essence of all things, human, spiritual, animate and inanimate. Everything has its own unique energy which must be acknowledged and given its due. "Ike di na awaja na awaja" is a common formulation of this idea: "Power runs in many channels". [ The complement of that saying] "Onye na nkie, onye na nkie"-literally, "Everyone and his own”- is a social expression of the same notion often employed as a convenient formula for saluting en masse an assembly too large for individual greetings.[4]

A similar exposition emerges in accounts of the central Yoruba concept ase, the enablement of creative possibility accessible in all forms of being, human and non-human, animate and inanimate, enabling consciousness and agency, “a unique blend of performative power and knowledge-the potential for certain achievements”, as described by Henry John Drewal  et al's Yoruba :Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought .[5]

 

This potential is actualized in terms of  the dialectal relationship between ori lasan, the readily perceptible, biological head and ori inu, the "inward head", the latter being the head as metaphorical for the essence of self that is related to the biological head but is not limited to it, "essence, attribute, and quintessence...the uniqueness of persons, animals, and things, their inner eye and ear, their sharpest point and their most alert guide as they navigate through this world and the one beyond" as  Olabiyi Babalalo Yai sums up  this  concept in his review of  Henry John Drewal  et al's Yoruba.[6]

It is that essence, that quintessence, that uniqueness, referenced by Yai, the distinctive character of the individual's inner eye and ear, and, as described by Achebe, the "unique energy which  must be acknowledged and given its due",  in the spirit of the Yoruba expression "fun iwa ni oniwa", "grant to each existent its own unique being",  highlighted by Rowland Abiodun in Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art,[7]  that is Falola's driving force in this book, as he explores how those he reflects upon "navigate through this world," a  trail resonating in their legacies represented by the bird flying swiftly through a lighted room and out again into the dark, the dark of a cold, winter night, as Bede describes human life in his Ecclesiastical History of England,[8]  evoking the overshadowing of terrestrial existence by the mysterious abysses of  birth and death.

In its investigations of individual creativity, In Praise of Greatness resonates with  Drewal  et al's account of classical Yoruba art as  mirroring

 

a world order of structurally equal yet autonomous elements [ in which the art functions as ] a formal means of organizing diverse powers, not only to acknowledge their autonomy but, more importantly,  to evoke, invoke and activate diverse forces, to marshal and bring them into the phenomenal world[ through] praising the momentous work[9]

 

of individuals as they seek to  understand and apply their understanding of the forces at work within and beyond themselves in the situations in which they operate  within the  "dynamic and fluid cosmos."[10] 

 

The "multifocality" achieved through  the creation of "structurally equal yet autonomous elements" in terms of  which  Drewal et al characterize classical Yoruba art as an expression of the principle of what Abiodun describes in another context as " fun iwa ni oniwa", resonates with Falola's book, as he invokes Joseph Ade Ayayi and Mahmood Mandani, Malami Buba and Barbara Harlow, Aderonke Adesanya and Michael Vickers,  among a great  conglomeration of dynamic persons, exploring the sources of the transformative powers expressed in the creative activities that shape their lives, seeking to " invoke and activate   [these] diverse forces, to marshal and bring them" into clarity of vision that they may empower those who encounter these crystallizations of lives that cannot be encapsulated in words, but which words can vividly evoke.

 

The book demonstrates an ethnically grounded and yet nationalistic and globally aware Yoruba consciousness, approaching the cosmos through a world view defined by a critically sensitive  intelligence steeped in the Yoruba cultural matrix and historical experience,  integrating the tumultuous creativity of humanity  and the universe within its shaping matrices,  constellating existence in terms of an elevated awareness framed by a language and its accompanying ethos,  demonstrating a nationalistic and a cosmopolitan intelligence radiating outward from Falola’s roots in Ibadan, Ibadan’s role as an Africa wide intellectual catalyst at a point in its history being central to the book’s explorations of creative developments across the country, in Africa and the world, particularly the United States where Falola has long lived as an academic on leaving his job as a scholar  at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, which, after the University of Ibadan, is the most prominent university in Nigeria’s  Southwest.

 

A cosmopolitan emergence from an ethnic and nationalistic core, In Praise of Greatness is a landmark in Nigerian and Yoruba history, a strategic publication in Black Studies and further globally resonant in its explorations of the nature of intellectual and artistic life.

The book is significant for Nigeria in dramatizing the potentials of the country as they relate to the world as a whole.  It demonstrates the achievements of its nationals on a national, African and global scale, dramatizing the country's  promise of sensitivity to its constituent ethnic nationalities within  a pan-ethnic, trans-racial and global positioning, celebrating excellence of Nigerians across the nation, in other parts of the world and their recognition of the greatness achieved by others.

It projects a nationalistic imperative critical to nation building as an anchor within the global identity represented by homo sapiens, an imperative critical for a country whose history  is marked by flashpoints of  recurrent conflict and state and communal distortions resulting from struggles between ethnic and other group identities, as the book powerfully projects an incentive to explore one's social environment, one's life and one's larger community,  for those who demonstrate sterling qualities, at whatever scale of expression, a work one should read consistently and read to one's close ones, in order to cultivate images of superlative achievement that could guide one's life.

Interpretive Models for a Transdisciplinary Intelligence 

How does one explore the interior of a phenomenon, particularly when what is to be studied demonstrates consciousness, that complex of internal relations with the self and the world external to the self?

One can do it through a mirror, a conceptual mirror, a discursive mirror, such as a book celebrating other people. Through such a selection, one may better understand the values of the person making the selection of people and qualities to celebrate.

In Praise of Greatness, though about others, through  its unification of his work as historian, multi-disciplinary scholar and man of letters across the humanities and social sciences,  facilitates the development of an image of Toyin Falola, beginning from his  centring in African history, to his creation and co-creation of Africa centred cognitive configurations in various disciplines.

                  Rhizomatic Intelligence 

 

The picture that emerges may be crystallized in terms of an image of organic development, the rhizome. The rhizome,  as developed by the famous example from Giles Deleuze and Félix Guatarri,[11] evokes multi-directional orientation with no absolute centre, like a plant the roots of which do not seem to emerge from a specific point as they grow in various directions, thereby developing a complex system,  the most expansive form of which is the cosmos, a conception that may be correlated  with the Indian origin Spanda theory of multi-directional cosmic force, “waves of activity issuing forth from an unseen source of spontaneous expression, emanating not only from the centre outward but from everywhere at once.”[12]

 

Also illuminating of Falola’s achievement is the conjunction in the thought of the Igbo Afa system of knowledge of the plant Dandanura, known as Ogilisi in Igbo, with the deity Agwu, the central cognitive guide of the system. Onwuejeowgu describes the character of Ogilisi as a creeping plant which spreads out covering a large area, facilitating its capture of  sunlight, even as its main root is difficult to locate for it has many, enabling it grow in several directions at once, as making  it symbolic for Agwu’s ability  to penetrate the visible and invisible worlds in his search  for knowledge, travelling to distant lands to gather information about the unknown, knowledge placed at the service of the dibia, the Afa specialist of the sacred consecrated to Agwu.[13]

 

These metaphors may be seen as evoking the decentralized, trans-disciplinary character of what I name The Falola Network (TFN), a transnational research  and publication system inspired by Falola,  a multi-disciplinary conglomeration of scholars distributed around the world and operating beyond particular institutional contexts.

 

The Falola Network integrates and goes beyond Falola’s work, subsuming and transcending  Toyin Falola Studies, the latter a field of knowledge consisting  in the exploration of the work and life of the polymathic scholar and writer in terms of his reconfiguration of disciplines through  the dynamism of cognitive maps  in their relationship with each other, a scholar whose academic education is in history but whose self education and publications span practically every branch of the humanities and a large swathe of the social sciences, initiatives associated with whom  are increasingly growing as  a defining force in scholarship on Africa across the humanities and social sciences, a scope  of achievement reflected in his current appointment as the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin.

 

The bird soaring over the structurations defining the landscape of human knowledge. What does the winged traveller see? How does he perceive the relationships between the various networks defining that field? What role does he play in restructuring these patterns? What is his part in shaping each domain that contributes to constituting the whole?

 

Individual history, city history, ethnic history, national history, ideational history, diachronic and synchronic configurations-what was, what is and what may be- how may these matrices in Falola’s scholarship converge in  projecting a face[14] to the world, the conglomerations of discourses, networked domains of cognitive exploration constituted by the scholarly and artistic trail of Falola?

 

 

 

 

                       Seeds of Possibility

 

These questions and images evoke the dynamism of the human mind in its totalising and cosmicising orientations, demonstrated  by  Falola’s work in its restless proliferation across disciplines, a cognitive dynamism that may be understood in terms of the radiations of a concentration of consciousness, a matrix in action between present, past and future, an idea  adapting  Shloma Rosenberg on Olodumare in Lukumi thought, a diaspora variant of Yoruba cosmology:

 

Olodumare (One who owns the realm of never-ending possibilities; olo--owner, odu--repository of possibility, mare--from Oshumare, the serpent of infinity)… God in His/Her aspect as architect of continuous creation… the repository of possibility and circumstance from which each moment is born…the receptacle for Odu, which are the constellations of possibilities that contain all events past, present and future.[15]

 

 Along related lines, Buddhism references what is described as the “alaya-vijnana” or storehouse consciousness, the seeds of possibility inhering in the self, suggesting the potentialities that may be actualized through a person’s selections from the nexus of opportunities open to them. Ernest Wood delineates this image compellingly as evoking :

 

a house or rather a home, which is in turn a place where all the valued things for use by us are kept and among which we dwell. It came to mean also the spiritual storehouse of all the potentialities of life, which is to be regarded as our true home and also as our ultimate destination.[16]

 

Kalabari thought may be described as depicting the working out of the course of one's life as maximally achieved through  seeking out the relationships between the general network  of possibilities and  one’s lived experience, perceiving “the universal in the particular, the timeless in the temporal…supplying hints of infinity, immortality, the deep interconnectedness of being, and its inexpressible significance…bringing forth possibilities  through the reconciliation of the tensions between conscious and unconscious, finite and infinite, freedom and necessity”, as described by Nimi Wariboko.[17]

 

These choices are reflected in the individual's  cognitive configurations, their styles of thinking, their central preoccupations, the people and objects they choose to surround themself with, and above all,  in their sense of vocation “the orientation of a person’s life and work in terms of their ultimate sense of mission,”[18] as these choices actualize the trajectory of their lives.

 

 These progressions are dramatized in the  forward motion of life, represented by a vertical line,  in terms of which time is conventionally understood, yet bisected by a horizontal  line representing possibilities different from those actualized in the linear progression of time as the individual experiences it, possibilities superseded by choices made and therefore irredeemable within the linear understanding of time, as well as evoking conceptions of time different from the linear, ideas of temporal  multi-directionality and multi-dimensionality.

 

This dialect of opening and closing of possibility as well as of co-existent temporalities and dimensions may be seen as visualized by the correlative symbolism of the crossroads in Africana cosmologies, represented by intersecting horizontal and vertical lines shaping a circular space, as in the Yoruba opon ifa,  the Benin igha ede,  Voodoo veves and in the Dahomean cosmogram.[19]

 

The convergence and divergence of the lines may evoke linear temporality and its alternate possibilities represented by unrealized, latent or conjunctive but different dimensions, while the circle within which these lines converge and diverge may suggest the totality of being within the ambit of   infinity,[20] the framework within which the self journeys across the various coordinates evoked by the intersecting temporalities and dimensions subsumed by the sun under which all terrestrial beings travel.[21]

 

                       The Self as Epistemic Matrix

 

Within this context, one could explore the epistemic matrix constituted by the development of Falola’s life and work, the growth of the self  "as a collection of knowledge and ideas", as Falola puts it in his proposal for a particular work in progress, eventually published as Decolonizing African Knowledge: Autoethnography and African Epistemologies,[22]   the self  as the  generative centre of the transformation of experience into knowledge.

 

One could examine the processes through which he has constructed a cognitive universe in his journey from the moment of his first experience of awareness to the present or as demonstrated by his  engagement with particular contexts in processes of action and reaction.

 

 

      Cognitive Itinerary: Inward, Outward, Internal, External

                                      

Such a cognitive itinerary, a journey of understanding, is an inward journey that is a corollary of one's external journey.

 

                   The External, Temporal Journey

 

The external journey is both temporal and spatial. The external, temporal journey encompasses the constitution of one’s  life in terms of  motion across the smallest to the largest temporal scales, from one moment to the next, from one landmark in one's life to another, and, ultimately, from birth to old age and beyond.

 

                  The External, Spatial Journey

 

The external, spatial journey is constituted by one’s motion across those places one navigates in the course of one’s life, as Falola does from Ibadan to Ife to Texas, being central locations of his psychological, social and professional development.

 

                  The Inward, Mental  Journey

 

The inward, mental journey is demonstrated in the progression of understanding constituted by one's growth in making sense of one's existence within the temporal and spatial contexts of one's life, from the moment of one's awareness of oneself as existing to various efforts to interpret  inward and outward stimuli to the eventual entry into transition from the terrestrial plane. 

 

One could thus map a person’s life journey, either in terms of the sweep of their   life's narrative or in terms of spots of illumination, representative experiences understood in terms of how these people have filtered their understanding of existence in terms of particular cognitive constructs,   particular conjunctions of ideas that define their identity, such  as that of a scholar and writer as Falola.

 

In terms of his scholarly development, an aspect of this journey of understanding in relation to Falola would be the processes through which he  arrived at his orientation to the study of African history. An initiating point in this regard is the decision to understand Ibadan history through the complex of factors navigated in his PhD and first sole written book.[23] This strategic step expands, as his career progresses, into a comprehensive examination of various contexts of continental and Diaspora African experience, and, as demonstrated by In Praise of Greatness, as represented by individual characters and their identities as part of a global social and discursive network.

 

 

 

                Inner and Outer Landscapes

 

In mapping the ideational complex that constitutes an individual, one  would be describing   their  inner universe, their inward landscape, the configuration of ideas, emotions and other aspects of awareness that constitute  who they are at a point in time, in relation to how  they present themself to the world.

This inward landscape would necessarily be understood in relation to the social, spatial and temporal contexts to which the person is responding, since the human being is embodied within a biological, material and social universe, their  outer landscape[24]. 

 

                   Eshu as Summative Image

 

These interpretive possibilities may be seen as subsumed in the figure of the Yoruba orisa or deity Eshu, perceived  as enabling conjunctions between possibilities visualized in terms of crossroads of convergence between inner and outer landscapes, between the self and other aspects of existence, between possibilities and their capacity for transformation.[25]

 

 "If someone did not have his Esu in his body, he could not exist, he would not know that he is alive; therefore everybody must have his individual Esu,"[26] explain Juan Elbein and Deoscoredes Dos Santos. Toyin Falola’s  summation on Eshu complements this, describing him as  "a constant traveller"… "with the enormous capacity to know the truth and reveal it", "ubiquitous and invisible, so much so that his 'temple' can also be within the individual self".[27]

 

 

 

 

Models of Scholarship: The Falola Network, a Transnational Research and Publication System 

The diverse and richly interconnected corpus represented by Falola's achievement may be seen as centred in the creation and sustenance of academic systems and the generation of books exploring, in an uncompromisingly rigorous manner, every aspect of the African condition as it can be understood through the humanities and the social sciences, in the present, and to some degree, across history. 

 

Falola is an educational activist, a creator of scholarly networks that provide opportunities for scholars on Africa, within and beyond Africa, to reconfigure knowledge about the continent, an advocate for making African centred knowledge more truly so in its epistemology and institutional integration,  and a demonstrator of  strategies for achieving this,  expressing   institutional and inter-personal sensitivities vital to  systems creation and sustenance, both a successful intra-institutional worker and a creator of institutions. 

 

A central demonstration of these achievements is what I name The Falola Network,[28] a transnational research  and publication system  of scholars and projects, integrating scholars and publishers in various continents,  an initiative  that takes to a  high and possibly unprecedented level the international culture of scholarship.

 

It consists of individual books, book series, scholarly articles and conferences  organised by Toyin Falola in collaboration with others or organised or written  in relation to Toyin Falola, along with two rich Google groups organised by Falola[29] as well as scholars inspired or enabled by Falola and the initiatives he is central to actualizing, initiatives steadily shaping humanities and social sciences scholarship on Africa.

 

Polymathic Conjunctions: Aristotle and Falola[30]

 

      Foundational

 

Falola's work in terms of his individual creativity and his transcontinental organizational network may be examined in terms of a comparison with the  ancient Greek polymath and institutional innovator Aristotle as “philosopher and organizer of research,” a characterization reflecting an understanding of Aristotle's foundational influence in the configuration of Western scholarship as due both to his individual genius and his capacity for interpreting, organizing and presenting the research done by others, in the context of his creating and running an institution in the terms of what is now known as a research centre.

 

Aristotle being paradigmatic as a particularly strategic polymathic research innovator, other research innovators, particularly  polymathic figures, may be compared to their closeness to or distance from that paradigm. A reflection of the Aristotelian construction of the epistemologies and subject matter that underlie  Western scholarship is suggested by Falola's “Ritual Archives” and “Pluriversalism” essays,[31] in which he argues for a rethinking of the role of classical African thought in the contemporary dominance  of Western systems

in modern scholarship and education.

I invoke Aristotle in relation to Falola and the scholarly network he is central to because of the similarities between Falola's aspirations in his essay "Ritual Archives" and Aristotle's   engagement in laying foundations for how knowledge may be gained,  applying his exploratory strategies to possibly the entire scope of knowledge known in his time and place and developing a teaching and  research institution to house and guide this activity, and according to Anthony Kenny,[32] was the first in the Western tradition to develop a study syllabus and build a research library for the use of the institution he built. 

Falola's "Ritual Archives" essay, complemented by his "Pluriversalism" essay,  advocates a rethinking of principles of inquiry and of demonstration of knowledge, derived from classical African thought and operating in harmony with  the Western tradition of scholarship which Aristotle pioneered and within which Falola is working as he seeks to harness ostensibly divergent discourses, the African and the Western, the spiritual and the secular, the visual and the verbal, the performative and the discursive, an aspiration that theoretically, subsumes the entirety of possibilities of knowledge, even as the footprints of this ambitious thinker are already present across a vast range of thought, suggesting the possibility of extending that epistemic and metaphysical rethinking to a similar encyclopedic scope, along with trying to work out the institutional contexts within which these reconfigurations may take place.

 

           Qualification

The degree to which any scholarly initiative can foundationally rework the modes and subjects of scholarly investigation as Aristotle did at the headwaters of the Western tradition, is questionable, although not perhaps impossible as the horizon of understanding expands, necessitating new investigative foundations.

 

However, the multiplicity of connections between researchers in different countries working on projects to which Falola is central might be unique for an individual in the history of scholarship, as different from a traditional institution, such scope being conventionally demonstrated by institutions made up of many coordinating units and directors.

 

 

          Contextualisation

 

I began my comparative evaluation of Falola and The Falola Network from Aristotle and the Western tradition he initiated rather than from African examples where  polymathic learning is evident, such as  the Yoruba Ifa and the Ghanaian Adinkra, encyclopedic encapsulations of knowledge,  paradigms of   efforts to integrate what is known in the quest for what can be known, or from the Arab and Persian worlds, where  the culture of the scholarly polymath may have emerged with such thinkers as the philosopher and medical researcher Ibn Sina before it did in the Renaissance West, which crystallized the culture in the concept of the uomo universali, the universal man, because  the Aristotelian example combines a range of possibilities closer to Falola's achievement and aspirations than those others.

 

Falola is a scholar trained in and operating within the tradition of which Aristotle is foundational. The techniques of logic, of rhetoric, of disciplinary organization, pioneered by Aristotle, are the same cognitive systems in terms of which Falola has been cultured and within which he principally works, and from within which he is advocating a rethinking of these foundations, not in a wholesale return to the classical African systems he references but in terms of a complementarity between both cognitive cultures.

The relationship between these polymathic figures, Aristotle and Falola,  is one of partnership, of resonance, of confluence, not conflict, demonstrating how one may appreciate and draw from the achievements of various cultures, appreciating difference while seeking profounder perceptions  of unity.   

                   Grounding in Global Cognitive History

One may view this subject in the light of a global and pan-historical grasp of the world of human creativity, from prehistory to the present, a Hegelian kind of aspiration, but in terms of a broader scope of exploration. Along those lines, one could explore the various ways that people have structured the quest for knowledge as a primary human need.

 

While addressing the social contexts of these structurations and the various uses to which these efforts have been put, one could be principally interested in the global configuration actualized by various cognitive processes and systems across space and time, the network of possibilities they dramatize.

In that context, one can identify with Aristotle as a paradigmatic thinker and institution builder without needing to contend with race centred appropriations of the Greek thinker. No thinker and body of knowledge is summative of human possibility, all of them being ultimately complementary.  

The Paradigmatic Character of the Platonic-Aristotelian                        Achievement

At the same time, however, the combination of the Platonic-Aristotelian achievement may be seen as pointing to  much of the possibilities of human cognitive capacity,  because, between them, they are able to demonstrate how one may adopt any exploratory stance and examine and justify it, while, to the best of my limited knowledge, other thinkers in various cultures are not likely to demonstrate the scope of cognitive resources jointly demonstrated by these thinkers-from ratiocinative thinking, to dramatic dialogue in the context of vivid social contexts and physical settings, parables and mythic narratives, to surveys of other philosophical positions to explorations across the breadth of knowledge and examinations of how these diversities may be united.

A key value of the Western system, pioneered by the Greeks and particularly by Aristotle, complemented by Plato, may be understood as  the primacy of the human capacity to evaluate reality, even within the understanding that human faculties might not be capable of understanding fundamental aspects of reality, might be capable but limited, or incapable of fully grasping its scope.

Such summations are not left to the province of what the human person cannot engage with but are related with in terms of a comparative evaluation of human possibility and cosmic being. This is  my own summation of a central picture that may be developed from the convergence of secular and religious thought in the Western tradition, a human centered but cosmologically grounded, epistemically sensitive pluralism.

The various possibilities of this focus on the empirical centre of reality in the human person have been well developed in the Western academic context, making it a system that needs studying as an environment in which there is an opportunity somewhere to study or research practically anything, as long as one is ready to interpret and present one’s studies within the broad outlines of linear rationality.

 

 

                       Relationality of Achievement

Does Falola need to be assessed in terms of the degree to which he achieves Aristotle's encyclopedic rethinking of the foundations of scholarship?

 

No, because the contemporary character of scholarship is much more complex than in Aristotle's time, the embryonic character of knowledge in the context in which he was working enabling his work to be so foundational and across such a broad span of investigations.

 

As it is, being able to indicate the need for rethinking of these foundations, as Falola is doing, being able to build on such a suggestion or being able to make progress in relation to such rethinking in any subject in any discipline, talk less an entire discipline, is a  great leap forward  on account of the distance even the Western  world of learning has traveled in the centuries before and since Aristotle, the pyramidal complexity of knowledge achieved in this much farther point in time.

 

Falola and his associated scholars do not need to be said to aspire to an Aristotelian scope because the possibility of such a scope is questionable at this point in time. It exists in terms of a similarity, not an identity. That similarity itself is so huge that it is not realistic to expect any human being to operate at that level. 

 

Although it might be possible, it is unlikely and is more likely to emerge as the work of various scholars working in tandem across time. Even within a multi-scholar context, it would require a careful re-examination of relationships between the biological, psychological and social conditions of the development of knowledge, as these eventuate in the epistemic frames through which understanding is reached, in the context of the human being's relationship with the metaphysical context of existence.

Various thinkers have attempted something similar but the strength and impact of their efforts is another question. Early thinkers have bequeathed us with these aspirations but achieving the kind of prominence they achieved in such foundation laying cannot be assessed in terms of how the forerunners are assessed because once the possibility of such a cognitive achievement has been demonstrated, such an achievement henceforth in and of itself ceases to be valued in terms of such wonder and becomes more of something to be admired. 

Even then, such peaks of achievement, like an almost impossibly high mountain, its challenge the lure to climbing it, will continuously attract aspirants. Each person who strives towards rethinking the foundations of understanding in a subject, in a discipline, in the world of learning as whole, does it in their own way, and it is not realistic to assess Kant wholesale  in terms of Aristotle or Hegel totally  in terms of Kant or Aristotle, or among encyclopedic knowledge systems, Plato in terms of Ifa or both in terms of the Indian Mahabharata,[33] even though all three of the latter share, in different ways, a relationship between the exploration of contrastive perspectives on the issues they explore in the context of artistic expression.

 

The Transcendent Inspiration of the Falola Network  

What the Falola Network represents may be seen as an institution without a geographical centre- can Falola's University of Texas office be seen as the centre?-  without a dedicated budget stream, managed largely as a digitally coordinated, rhizomatic network, driven more by the selfless pursuit of knowledge  than in terms of financial gain accruing to its members, as in economic gains academics make through publishing.

A magnificent example of scholarly possibility, in particular, and human possibility, in general, in which the central currency of influence is not monetary or any form of material profit or political power  but the quest for knowledge.

The Ifa network of scholar priests from Falola's Yorubaland origins and their brethren among other African systems will be proud to see this magnification of their  example of relentless cognitive quest as they traveled far and wide seeking knowledge in terms of a web of fellow devotees spread across vast distances,[34] journeys even taken inadvertently  across the terrible Middle Passage, leading to the ongoing flowering of ancient knowledge in novel forms in new lands, surviving and thriving in spite of the grim circumstances of the method of arrival.

 

                                                     References

Abimbola, Wande,  Ifa Divination Poetry. New  York: NOK, 1977.

Abiodun, Rowland, Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Achebe, Chinua , “The Igbo World and Its Art” in  African Philosophy: An Anthology, ed. Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze.Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell,1997. 435-437.

Adepoju, Oluwatoyin Vincent, “The  Face as Epistemological and Metaphysical  Matrix in Yoruba Thought”. Facebook Note. URL: https://www.facebook.com/notes/oluwatoyin-vincent-adepoju/oju-loro-wa-physical-vision-to-witchcraft-and-mystical-insight-face-as-epistemic/10156282314274103/?comment_id=10157097639203684&notif_id=1553579629862321&notif_t=feed_comment&ref=notif&__m_async_page__=1&_rdc=1&_rdr  Accessed 3/26/2019.

Amherd, K. Noel, Reciting Ifa Difference, Heterogeneity, and Identity.Trenton: Africa World Press, 2010.

Barber, Karin,   I Could Speak Till Tomorrow: Oriki, Women and the Past in a Yoruba Town . Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press,  1991.  

Bello, Adeyinka. Personal communication.

Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guatarri,  A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.London: Continuum, 2004.

Drewal, Henry John et al, Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989.

Desmangles, Leslie Gerald,  “African Interpretations of the Christian Cross in Vodun”, in Sociological Analysis, Vol. 38, No. 1. 1977. 13-24.

Elbein, Juan and Deoscoredes Dos Santos,  "Esu Bara Principle of Individual Life in the Nago System"   (Colloque International sur la Notion de Personne en Afrique Noire).

Falola, Toyin, In Praise of Greatness: The Poetics of African Adulation.  Durham: Carolina Academic Press,  2019.

…………………… “Ritual Archives” in  The Toyin Falola Reader on African Culture, Nationalism, Development and Epistemologies. Austin: Pan African University Press, 2018. 913-937 .

……………………“Pluriversalism”,  in  The Toyin Falola Reader on African Culture, Nationalism, Development and Epistemologies. Austin: Pan African University Press, 2018. 889-911.

……………….. “Esu : The God Without Boundaries" in Esu : Yoruba God of Power and the Imaginative Frontiers, ed. Toyin Falola ( Durham : Carolina Academic Press, 2013). 3-37.

………………… The Political Economy of a Pre-Colonial African State: Ibadan, 1830-1900. Ife: Ife University Press, 1984.

Fatunmbi, Awo Fa'lokun, “ Esu-Elegba: Ifa and the Spirit of the Divine Messenger”. https://www.scribd.com/document/134408583/Esu-Ifa-and-the-Spirit-of-the-Divine-Messenger.  Accessed 3/25/19.

Ganeri,  Jornadon, The Concealed Art of the Soul: Theories of the Self and Practices of Truth in Indian Ethics and Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013.

Guttenplan, Samuel,  Mind's Landscape: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind.  Malden: Blackwell,2000.

Hopkins' Gerald Manley,  "O the mind, the mind has mountains; cliffs of fall/Frightful, sheer, no-man fathomed" in "No Worst, there is None" in Oxford Anthology of English Literature, Vol. II. (ed) Harold Bloom, Lionel Trilling, Frank Kermode and John Hollander. Oxford : Oxford UP, 1973): 142.

Inscribing Meaning : Writing and Graphic Systems in African Art”, Smithsonian National Museum

of African Art,  https://africa.si.edu/exhibits/inscribing/nsibidi.html. Accessed 24/02/18.

Iroegbu, Patrick,   “Introduction to Igbo Medicine:
Igbo Healers and Agwu Deity in a Therapeutic Society” http://umunumo.com/igbomedicine.html Accessed 3/26/2019.

Kenny, Anthony, A New History of Western Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012.

………………………….Aquinas on Mind. London: Routledge, 1993.

Lear, Jonathan,   Aristotle : The Desire to Understand. Cambridge : Cambridge UP, 1999.

Matital, Bimal Krishna, Ethics and Epics: The Collected Essays of Bimal Krishna Matilal Volume II, ed.  Jonardon Ganeri. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015.

Ogundipe, Ayodele,  "Retention and Survival of Yoruba Traditional Religion in the Diaspora: Esu in Brazil and Benin Republic" from Ivie: Nigerian Journal of Arts and Culture.Vol.1. No. 3 .1986.

Onwuejeogwu, Angulu,  Afa Symbolism and Phenomenology in Nri Kingdom and Hegemony: An African Philosophy of Social Action . Benin-City: Ethiope, 1997.

Orangun, Adegboyega, Destiny: The Unmanifested Being. Ibadan: African Odyssey Publisher, 1998.

Plato : Complete Works, ed John M. Cooper.  Indianapolis : Hackett Publishing,  1997.

Rosen, Norma, “Chalk Iconography in Olokun Worship”, African Arts, Vol. 22, No. 3. 1989.: 44-53+88.

Rosenberg, Shloma, “Olorun-God in the Lukumi Faith” in Mystic Curio. http://mysticcurio.tripod.com/olorun.htm  Accessed 26/02/2010.

Sanchez, Marcos Ifalola,   “Discourse on Meaning and Symbology in the Ifa Divination System” ,  Ifa Yesterday, Ifa Today, Ifa Tomorrow, http://ifalola.blogspot.com/2007/11/discourse-on-meaning-and-symbology-in.html Accessed  3/25/2019.

The Venerable Bede,  Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum,AD 731,  translated by Leo Sherley-Price as  Ecclesiastical History of the English People. London: Penguin, 1990.

“Vocation” in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, 1966.

Wariboko, Nimi,  Ethics and Time : Ethos of Temporal Orientation in Politics and Religion of the Niger Delta .  Lanham: Rowman and  Littlefield Publishers, 2010.

“What does  Spanda Mean?”, Spanda Foundation, https://spanda.org/who-we-are/origin-of-name/ Accessed 3/25/2019.

Wood, Ernest,  Zen Dictionary Vermont: Philosophical Library, Inc., 1962.

Yai, Olabiyi Babalalola,  “Review of Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought by Henry John Drewal, John Pemberton, Rowland Abiodun and Allen Wardwell”,  African Arts, Vol. 25, No. 1 .1992. 20+22+24+26+29. 22.

Notes

---

[1]Toyin Falola, In Praise of Greatness: The Poetics of African Adulation ( Durham: Carolina Academic Press,  2019).

[2] This description of the function of oriki comes from a personal communication by scholar of Yoruba culture Adeyinka Bello. The definitive text on oriki, however, is Karin Barber’s  I Could Speak Till Tomorrow: Oriki, Women and the Past in a Yoruba Town (Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press,  1991).  

[3] Adegboyega Orangun, Destiny: The Unmanifested Being ( Ibadan: African Odyssey Publisher, 1998).

[4] Chinua Achebe,  “The Igbo World and Its Art” in  African Philosophy: An Anthology, ed. Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell,1997) : 435-437.

[5] Henry John Drewal, John Pemberton, Rowland Abiodun and Allen Wardwell, Yoruba:

Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989) :  16.

[6] Olabiyi Babalalo Yai, “Review of Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought by Henry John Drewal, John Pemberton, Rowland Abiodun and Allen Wardwell”,  African Arts, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Jan., 1992): 20+22+24+26+29. 22.

[7] Rowland Abiodun, Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

[8] The Venerable Bede,  Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum,AD 731,  translated by Leo Sherley-Price as  Ecclesiastical History of the English People ( London: Penguin, 1990) : 130-31.

[9] Drewal, Pemberton, Abiodun, Wardwell, Yoruba,  16-17.

[10] Yoruba.18.

[11] Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guatarri, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London: Continuum, 2004) : 3-28.

[12] “What does  Spanda Mean?”, Spanda Foundation, https://spanda.org/who-we-are/origin-of-name/ (Accessed 3/25/2019).

[13] Angulu Onwuejeogwu, Afa Symbolism and Phenomenology in Nri Kingdom and Hegemony: An African Philosophy of Social Action ( Benin-City: Ethiope, 1997) 17.

[14] This is an allusion to what I name in my essay “The  Face as Epistemological and Metaphysical  Matrix in Yoruba Thought” in which the concept of a “face” is depicted as an exterior expression of an inward depth, understood in relation to  human beings, to abstract forms and to sentient, non-material forms of being, a summation of an animistic world view, in which externality in all forms of being expresses an internal dynamism, a form of agency not often accessible without the relevant cognitive tools enabling penetration from the exterior, “oju lasan”, the conventionally,  readily accessible exterior or face,  to the  interior of a phenomenon, “oju inu”,  the inward face or intimate identity of the phenomenon. https://www.facebook.com/notes/oluwatoyin-vincent-adepoju/oju-loro-wa-physical-vision-to-witchcraft-and-mystical-insight-face-as-epistemic/10156282314274103/?comment_id=10157097639203684&notif_id=1553579629862321&notif_t=feed_comment&ref=notif&__m_async_page__=1&_rdc=1&_rdr  Accessed 3/26/2019.

[15] Shloma Rosenberg on Olodumare, “Olorun-God in the Lukumi Faith” in Mystic Curio ,http://mysticcurio.tripod.com/olorun.htm  (Accessed 26/02/2010).

[16] Ernest Wood,  Zen Dictionary (Vermont: Philosophical Library, Inc., 1962) :  1-2.

[17] Nimi Wariboko,  Ethics and Time : Ethos of Temporal Orientation in Politics and Religion of the Niger Delta ( Lanham: Rowman and  Littlefield Publishers, 2010): 64-65.

[18] “Vocation”,  Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, 1966.

[19] As described in Henry John Drewal  et al's Yoruba, 17-26, Norma Rosen, “Chalk Iconography in Olokun Worship”, African Arts, Vol. 22, No. 3 (May, 1989) : 44-53+88, Leslie Gerald Desmangles, “African Interpretations of the Christian Cross in Vodun”, Sociological Analysis, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Spring, 1977) : 13-24.

[20] An adaption of the circularity of the  opon ifa understood as  symbolizing  infinity developed by Marcos Ifalola Sanchez in  “Discourse on Meaning and Symbology in the Ifa Divination System” in  his blog  Ifa Yesterday, Ifa Today, Ifa Tomorrow, http://ifalola.blogspot.com/2007/11/discourse-on-meaning-and-symbology-in.html (Accessed  3/25/2019).

[21] An adaptation of the description of the symbolism of the spiral as adapted in Victor Ekpuk’s painting Good Morning, Sunrise in which the spiral is an expression from Nigeria’s Cross River Nsibidi symbolism which may evoke the idea of “ journey but also the sun and eternity”. ” Inscribing Meaning : Writing and Graphic Systems in African Art”, Smithsonian National Museum

of African Art,  https://africa.si.edu/exhibits/inscribing/nsibidi.html. Accessed 24/02/18.

[22] Decolonizing African Knowledge: Autoethnography and African Epistemologies (Cambridge UP, 2022).

[23] Toyin Falola, The Political Economy of a Pre-Colonial African State: Ibadan, 1830-1900 ( Ife: Ife University Press, 1984).

[24] Samuel Guttenplan's Mind's Landscape: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind ( Malden: Blackwell,2000) demonstrates the possibilities of the metaphor of mind as landscape while  Anthony Kenny's Aquinas on Mind * ( London: Routledge, 1993)  demonstrates further the complexity of the image in challenges to the metaphor of landscape in relation to mind. The best known expression of the mind/landscape metaphor in English might be Gerald Manley Hopkin's "O the mind, the mind has mountains; cliffs of fall/Frightful, sheer, no-man fathomed" in "No Worst, there is None" in Oxford Anthology of English Literature, Vol. II. (ed) Harold Bloom, Lionel Trilling, Frank Kermode and John Hollander ( Oxford : Oxford UP, 1973): 142.

[25] As superbly described  by Awo Fa'lokun Fatunmbi in “ Esu-Elegba: Ifa and the Spirit of the Divine Messenger”. https://www.scribd.com/document/134408583/Esu-Ifa-and-the-Spirit-of-the-Divine-Messenger.  Accessed 3/25/19.

[26]  Juan Elbein and Deoscoredes Dos Santos in "Esu Bara Principle of Individual Life in the Nago System"   (Colloque International sur la Notion de Personne en Afrique Noire) quoted by  by Ayodele Ogundipe in "Retention and Survival of Yoruba Traditional Religion in the Diaspora: Esu in Brazil and Benin Republic" from Ivie: Nigerian Journal of Arts and Culture.Vol.1. No. 3 (1986):  62.

[27] Toyin Falola, in ""Esu : The God Without Boundaries" from Esu : Yoruba God of Power and the Imaginative Frontiers, ed. Toyin Falola ( Durham : Carolina Academic Press, 2013) :  4. Like Eshu for the Yoruba Ifa system, his counterpart amongst cognitive guides in knowledge systems, Agwu of  the Igbo Afa system is depicted by Onwuejeogwu in Afa Symbolism as travelling to distant lands to gather information about the unknown and is described by  Patrick Iroegbu as “believed to be the ally of men or women determining their destiny and life skills… a god of care who directs human affairs while navigating the world”. “Introduction to Igbo Medicine:
Igbo Healers and Agwu Deity in a Therapeutic Society” http://umunumo.com/igbomedicine.html (Accessed 3/26/2019).

[28] A name officially adopted for itself by Falola’s organization after I began to use it publicly, as I understand this progression.

[29] These are USAAfrica Dialogues Series  Google Group https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/usaafricadialogue and Yoruba Affairs Google group.

and Yoruba Affairs  https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=th#!forum/yorubaaffairs (Both accessed 3/26/19).

[30] The interpretation of Aristotle presented here is influenced by Jonathan Lear’s  Aristotle : The Desire to Understand ( Cambridge : Cambridge UP, 1999).

[31] Toyin Falola, “Ritual Archives”,  The Toyin Falola Reader on African Culture, Nationalism, Development and Epistemologies ( Austin: Pan African University Press, 2018): 913-937 , “Pluriversalism”, 889-911.

[32] Anthony Kenny,  A New History of Western Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012): 9. 

[33] Bimal Krishna Matital, as represented by such works as Ethics and Epics: The Collected Essays of Bimal Krishna Matilal Volume II, ed.  Jonardon Ganeri ( Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015) and Jornadon Ganeri in The Concealed Art of the Soul: Theories of the Self and Practices of Truth in Indian Ethics and Epistemology (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013) explore the philosophical significance of literary strategies in such works as Mahabharata, a work of literature of fundamental significance to Hinduism. The textual core of Ifa is composed of poetic and literary narratives known as ese ifa.  The implications of this artistic value is examined, among other works, by  K. Noel Amherd in  Reciting Ifa Difference, Heterogeneity, and Identity (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2010) ,   while the literary, dialogical  character of Plato’s work has come to the fore of Plato scholarship, as represented by the introduction in such texts as Plato : Complete Works, ed John M. Cooper    (Indianapolis : Hackett Publishing,  1997) and Philosophy in Dialogue:  Plato’s Many Devices, ed. Gary Alan Scott  (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2007}.

[34] As described of Ifa by Wande Abimbola in Ifa Divination Poetry ( New  York: NOK, 1977) : 13.