A Nimi Wariboko Reader: Outlining a Speculative Project

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

A Nimi Wariboko Reader

Outlining  a Speculative Project 

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

Compcros

Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems 

The work of the philosopher, theologian and  economist Nimi Wariboko is very rich in it's interweaving of Kalabari thought, Pentecostal philosophizing and  reflections fed by European philosophy, as well as his own unique meditations in which his mind soars beyond particular schools of thought, as evident in his acknowledgement pages, some of which represent great literature.

How best may readers be assisted in navigating this richly complex body of expression through the distillation of it's variety in a way that it's scope and details may be resourced by people at their various points of interest and need?

How may they be guided in gaining from Wariboko's work as conceptually sophisticated and lyrically luminous, abstract and yet practical, qualities demonstrated in their distinctiveness and at times in their unity, as befits a thinker who has been a pastor, and  in the challenging context of a church significantly congregated by African immigrants in New York, having previously entered into Christianity through involvement with the struggling survivals of the Lagos Maroko slum demolition, journeys within challenging contexts framed by his own personal navigation of the tension between inadequacy and potential, between deprivation and fulfillment, exploring creative possibilities even in the darkness of walls of prevention?

How may readers be directed to learning from Wariboko's developing from his navigations of thought and lived experience a rich version of the Pentecostal vision of life abundant on earth in relation to what he describes as the journey to infinity, a transcendent possibility which is however, already present in every moment, in the gap between  words, between one moment and the next, those pauses which suggest the possibility of reconsidering what is possible, enabling shaping the future in ways deviating from the limitations of the past while building on its forward projecting possibilities?

Two books have been published on Wariboko's work, one edited by Toyin Falola and another by Abimbola Adelakun.

A Nimi Wariboko Reader would also be a useful guide, presenting annotated distillations of his representative writings, perhaps by genre and by topic.

Genre selections could include excerpts from his acknowledgements pages, perhaps grouped according to theme.

His superb explorations of Kalabari thought would also need to be represented, perhaps organized in terms of particular concerns, such as relationships between circumstances and potential, between fate and free will.

His economic analyses must be represented  in it's various thrusts, as in examinations of and suggestions about global monetary policies and of relationships between economics and ultimate meanings of life. 

His integration of broader Protestant theology and Pentecostal theology, as in constructing ideas about the development of existence through the movement of spirit and the implications of this for individual life, needs to be presented.

His investigations of how to build cities in ways that inspire appreciation of the fullest possibilities of life needs to be captured.

Among other aspects of his work.

A book, print and digital, as well as distillations on social media, would be useful ways of organizing the project.

[Kaunda, DrCJ]

Hi Adepoju, 

I have been thinking on working on Nimi Wariboko's work too. Can we work on the reader together?

Thanks

Chammah 

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Wow.

Great thanks.

Sounds exciting although I had hoped to be much better informed on Wariboko before engaging the project but I can act as a consultant making suggestions, that way I can contribute without straining myself.

I'll send you a private email.

Thanks

Toyin

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

I forgot to mention the broad ranging and yet richly penetrating power of Wariboko's two book reviews relating to Yoruba cosmology, one on Rowland Abiodun and Jacob Olupona's edited book on the Ifa knowledge system, a review that is one of the best very short  summations of Ifa known to me, the others being by Karen Barber and my essay on Ifa in the Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought.

The other Wariboko review is his superb review of Olupona's book Ile-Ife: Time, Space and Imagination, in which Wariboko reshapes the book's contents in terms of an imagistic rendering of relationships between city and sovereign, between Ife and the Ooni of Ife in terms of the imaginative interpeneration of city space and human person in a cultural synthesis, from what I recall of that essay.

The cognitive style represented by those reviews dramatizes clearly, powerfully, concisely, Wariboko's self description in his Boston university web page, a description that is another of his strikingly engaging pieces of writing rather than a simple summation of research interests and publications, a summation in which he uses the imagery of folding, unfolding and refolding, if I recall clearly enough,in describing his work as a theoritician, a person integrating and reworking knowledge in terms of patterns of perception, those reviews going beyond summaries and analyses of content to rethinking and reframing their subjects in ways constituting original contributions to the subjects the books discuss.

I also did not mention his co-written editorials for the Pentecostal journal Pneuma, some of which are both beautiful and profound, imagistically scintillating, constellated like stars in the sky of ideas, qualities lifting them beyond disciplinary specializations into moving meditations on the human condition as engaged within humanity's spiritual quests.

I also treasure his WhatsApp communications beceause they are often written in the spirit of a compulsive pensmith or keyboard lyricist, opening the reader into the soul of a lover of knowledge as both caressing the mind and a means of worship of the Ultimate.

Great thanks to Chammah for his inspiring appreciation of my suggestions on a Nimi Wariboko Reader and his eagerness to actualize such a vision.

I am happy to make suggestions and provide help in constructing a Nimi Wariboko reader, but such an advisory role  is likely to be the best I can do at the moment since I am not yet adequately grounded in depth of knowledge across the varied range of Wariboko's work, an educational project I need to address in a manner more systematic than my current focus in those aspects I find most exciting within my very limited reading in depth of his range of publications.

Great thanks

Toyin