Imagination, Reason, Cosmos: Literature, Philosophy and Music in the Work of Abiola Irele [ Abstract of Project Proposal ]

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

                                                                                     Imagination, Reason, Cosmos

                                               Literature, Philosophy and Music in the Work of Abiola Irele

                                                                                     Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                                                                                         Compcros

                                                                        Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

                                                                                           

This essay develops an approach to understanding the cosmos through imagination and reason across literature, philosophy and music in the work of Abiola Irele.

How may these strategic theoretical and critical orientations by a penetrating explorer of African expressive forms and cognitions be correlated to give a unified picture of the cosmos approached from within these  varied  forms as studied by  a person whose thought is both grand and incisive but who did not publish any effort to unify his various zones of interest?

Can such a unification be mapped through his exposition of Negritude, a  philosophy that engages imagination and rhythm as primary principles for exploring  being in general?

How robustly, however, does Negritude relate with reason and science, two central thrusts of Irele’s work, even though his examination of science occurs in only one essay known to me, ‘The African Scholar’, though a trenchant examination that situates that engagement solidly in his thematic orientations?

To what degree was Irele an expositor of Negritude and to what degree was he a Negritude thinker, a person who tried to understand reality in terms of Negritudist ideas?

Irele’s thought, spanning classical and post-classical African thought and expression, across various disciplines, looking into the past, present and the future, provides templates for mapping the creativity of the continent and the transformations associated with it.

An effort to unify the cognitive streams underlying his varied engagements  will act like a lighthouse illuminating  a vast terrain within and beyond the continental and transcontinental penetration of African creativities.