The Baobab as Epistemic Metaphor: Cultural Positioning and Inter-Epistemic Adjudication : A Critical Response to Toyin Falola

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

                                                               

                                 

                             The Baobab as Epistemic Metaphor

                      Cultural Positioning and Inter-Epistemic Adjudication 

                                                       

                                 A Critical Response to Toyin Falola 

                                                      

                                                   

                                                        Tsitakakantsa

the biggest baobab in Madagascar

from

Mike Shanahan on Twitter

                                           Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                                      Compcros

                           Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems 

                   Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge 

Is  epistemology, the study of ways of arriving at and assessing knowledge, a culture neutral discipline? 

Are all epistemologies equally valid ways of understanding reality?

How may one examine the relative significance of different epistemologies or of various ways of employing the same epistemology?

I have just finished reading an essay arguing for the cultural contextualisation of  epistemology  delivered by Toyin Falola at the December 2018 "The Academy and the Idea of Decolonization Masterclass" at the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis.

A very fine essay. An impressive introduction, in terms of conceptual analysis and historical and geographical scope, to the idea and practice of decolonization as a political, cultural, educational and scholarly vision. 

Yet, easy to read, simple in diction and structure while being richly informative.

Provokes enquiry, and for me, a keen sensitivity to what I need to know that I don't know about, inspiring questioning of perspectives one might agree or not agree with but inspiring passionate engagement through lucidity and precision.

Provides a vital background to Falola's depth of focus on epistemic decolonization in his powerful "Ritual Archives", published in The Toyin Falola Reader  and The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy,edited by Toyin Falola and Adeshina Afolayan. 

Stimulating for me such questions as to what degree can one frame thinkers of such range as Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Descartes, for example, in terms of monolithic perspectives on rationality and the character of reality?

How valid is it to uniformly characterize mainstream Western thought , as different from Western esoteric and religious thought, as pursuing the dominance of  a universalistic style of reason?

May one not see as complementary to the idea of the culturally loaded character of epistemology,  Western thinkers and movements who emphasize relative mental positioning in arriving at knowledge, such as Hans Georg Gadamer in Truth and Method and those who emphasize embodied knowing, such as with phenomenology and Lakoff and Johnson, among others,   to give a selection from my largely second hand and imprecise knowledge on the subject?

May Immanuel Kant, doyen of the Enlightenment, a movement seen by one view as the template for Western overvaluation of  disinterested, disembodied reason, not also be baptized into such perspectives, even though he is described as focusing on space and time as prisms shaping perception, not on culture, a correlation of Kant with cultural relativity Olayinka Agbetuyi seems to have recently made on this group?

A move towards what Falola describes in that paper as "seeking a [ critical]  constellation of knowledges", demonstrating a sensitivity to the incompleteness of all knowledge systems, as Falola puts it,  in the spirit of the Akan proverb he opens the essay with?:

Wisdom is like a baobab tree,

a single person’s hand cannot embrace it 

   I hope the essay is published soon.

[Toyin Falola]

Namesake:

Thanks for doing this. I have completed the draft of the book on the subject, but diversions here, diversions there, diversions to the left, and diversions to the right do prevent the ability to digest. You know what happens to the snake that swallows a frog?

TF

 

Toyin Falola

Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

104 Inner Campus Drive

Austin, TX 78712-0220, USA

http://toyinfalolanetwork.org/

 

 

 

From: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday, November 26, 2019 at 4:18 PM
To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Baobab as Epistemic Metaphor: Cultural Positioning and Inter-Epistemic Adjudication : A Critical Response to Toyin Falola

 

                                                               

                                 

 

                             The Baobab as Epistemic Metaphor

 

                      Cultural Positioning and Inter-Epistemic Adjudication 

                                                       

                                 A Critical Response to Toyin Falola 

 

                                                      

                                                   

                                                        Tsitakakantsa

the biggest baobab in Madagascar

from

Mike Shanahan on Twitter

 

 

                                           Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                                      Compcros

                           Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems 

                   Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge 

 

Is  epistemology, the study of ways of arriving at and assessing knowledge, a culture neutral discipline? 

 

Are all epistemologies equally valid ways of understanding reality?

 

How may one examine the relative significance of different epistemologies or of various ways of employing the same epistemology?

 

I have just finished reading an essay arguing for the cultural contextualisation of  epistemology  delivered by Toyin Falola at the December 2018 "The Academy and the Idea of Decolonization Masterclass" at the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis.

 

A very fine essay. An impressive introduction, in terms of conceptual analysis and historical and geographical scope, to the idea and practice of decolonization as a political, cultural, educational and scholarly vision. 

 

Yet, easy to read, simple in diction and structure while being richly informative.

 

Provokes enquiry, and for me, a keen sensitivity to what I need to know that I don't know about, inspiring questioning of perspectives one might agree or not agree with but inspiring passionate engagement through lucidity and precision.

 

Provides a vital background to Falola's depth of focus on epistemic decolonization in his powerful "Ritual Archives", published in The Toyin Falola Reader  and The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy,edited by Toyin Falola and Adeshina Afolayan. 

 

Stimulating for me such questions as to what degree can one frame thinkers of such range as Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Descartes, for example, in terms of monolithic perspectives on rationality and the character of reality?

 

How valid is it to uniformly characterize mainstream Western thought , as different from Western esoteric and religious thought, as pursuing the dominance of  a universalistic style of reason?

 

May one not see as complementary to the idea of the culturally loaded character of epistemology,  Western thinkers and movements who emphasize relative mental positioning in arriving at knowledge, such as Hans Georg Gadamer in Truth and Method and those who emphasize embodied knowing, such as with phenomenology and Lakoff and Johnson, among others,   to give a selection from my largely second hand and imprecise knowledge on the subject?

 

May Immanuel Kant, doyen of the Enlightenment, a movement seen by one view as the template for Western overvaluation of  disinterested, disembodied reason, not also be baptized into such perspectives, even though he is described as focusing on space and time as prisms shaping perception, not on culture, a correlation of Kant with cultural relativity Olayinka Agbetuyi seems to have recently made on this group?

 

A move towards what Falola describes in that paper as "seeking a [ critical]  constellation of knowledges", demonstrating a sensitivity to the incompleteness of all knowledge systems, as Falola puts it,  in the spirit of the Akan proverb he opens the essay with?:

 

 

Wisdom is like a baobab tree,

a single person’s hand cannot embrace it 

 

 

   I hope the essay is published soon.

 

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

Thanks Prof. Falola.

It would be wonderful to have a book from you on this subject, bringing non-Western and Western thought into dialogue.

The essay, too, is priceless.

It presents the subject in terms of a historical and ideational sweep and yet is readily understandable by a secondary school student, in my view, written in plain yet at times richly evocative English with technical terms carefully and briefly explained without breaking the expository rhythm.

It would be helpful if your essays were to be freely available to the public, the way that scholars such as Eliot Wolfson and Alexis Sanderson have done on academia.edu with their published essays.

That facilitates exposure to the evolving ideas of a scholar, creating a platform from which one is better empowered to go to the scholar's  books for fuller elucidation.

The cost of academic books, particularly those published in the West, a cost particularly challenging  in relation to weak currencies, making it challenging for individuals and perhaps institutions to acquire such books, in situations of poor bookshop and library culture as in Nigeria, reinforces the need for ready access to the shorter works of a scholar.

The essay introduces readers to debates integrating Africa and other parts of the world, engaging scholarship from South America, for example, that might not be readily accessible to people in Nigeria, to reference one African country.

If its possible, I would like to contribute to editing  the essay so it will shine even beyond the perhaps still gestative draft you sent me and do a paragraph by paragraph review of it.

thanks

toyin

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/916F6178-850C-4A71-BEA9-B1DC8E5DADB4%40austin.utexas.edu.