Oga Afolayan,
I salute you. It's good to hear others' views on one's initiatives even when they disagree with one.
I have rethought the issue and chosen to proceed. I have described my motivations in a follow up post to this group.
Is Falola's legacy speaking for itself an adequate projection of that legacy?
Does the legacy of a cultural creator, particularly, or even of all kinds of creators, not need to be examined and foregrounded by other people, demonstrating the impact of that legacy beyond its creator, its immediate referents and originating contexts, and perhaps illuminating aspects of its significance that even the creator might not have thought of?
The entire structure of scholarship, one approach to which is the development of new understanding of what is accessible to humanity, is based on that premise, hence the various books on Falola.
I am taking Falola scholarship from its accustomed cultural and referential parameters into asking questions about the creative processes at play in the creation of the Falola phenomenon, and exploring how these processes can be adapted by others in their own lives.
The artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci, the physicist Albert Einstein, among others, are the subject of countless efforts to understand the nature of creative genius, distilling such understanding in a way that other people can learn from and possibly apply to themselves.
Why not Falola?
Must Falola discourse remain confined to abstract texts, rich as these are in grappling with the details and scope of his thought? Must it remain limited to discussions in rarefied scholarly books, priceless as these are but which most members of the public will not know about, talk less read?
Is his achievement not relevant to humanity as a whole and therefore worthy of, even vital, for general human understanding?
After all, the creative multiplicity demonstrated by his achievement may be likened to the entrepreneurial and technological multiplicity of an Elon Musk, one of the greatest technological entrepreneurs of all time, founder of Space X, Tesla Motors and more, all initiatives founded on a basic nexus of orientation, suggesting these great creative multiplicities may be seen as based on similar foundations.
My vision is that of taking the Falola legacy to the larger marketplace of ideas,where it may rub shoulders with the achievements of the Elon Musks, the da Vincis, the Einsteins, the Ibn Sinas, Ibn Arabis and other polymaths of the Persian/Arab worlds, demonstrating an achievement that resonates with the high point of conceptions of human possibility represented by the European Renaissance vision of the Uomo Universali, the Universal Person, manifesting in their activity and self development the varied dynamisms of human possibility, as well as with Yoruba/African conceptions of self actualization within multiplicity of expression.
As for the idea of charging people money to learn about Falola, I need clarification about that discomfort.
Falola is an academic. Most of his friends are academics. Academics are people who work in an institution of leaning and are paid for their services.
Falola's books and books about Falola are not produced for free or distributed free most of the time, they are commercial initiatives which cost money to produce and which people and institutions buy.
Falola Studies is therefore part of an economic system of production, in which people are being charged to learn about and from Falola by buying his books and being taught by him, their economic contributions part of an economy empowering Falola to generate the knowledge and skill vital to sustaining that economy.
Going beyond his current focus on more specific subjects in various disciplines, Falola may choose to teach people about ''techniques of creativity'', ''multidisciplinary productivity'' etc using his own experience as the foundation for such exploration, perhaps in dialogue with his rich explorations of other creatives in various essays, a good number of which are collected and framed by a philosophical discussion in his In Praise of Greatness.
The world would benefit from such efforts. He may choose to do it within the context of his academic job, as a course offering, as an elective or as a seminar, as I experienced with a writer teaching meditation as a route to creativity, among many other optional seminars at University College, London.
He could choose to do it outside his academic context, as Ato Quason is currently doing on YouTube with discussing criticism.
He could choose not to charge, as Quayson has so chosen, or he could choose to charge, as Margaret Atwood is doing with her virtual seminars on art.
The global social system runs to a large extent on principles of exchange for goods and services and people have significant discretion as to how to navigate this system.
Falola is not doing any of these and I am doing it in relation to his relentless productivity, sustained and ceaselessly expanding over decades.
Even if Falola does bring out such an initiative, mine will differ from his, because, I, as the person looking at his work, am different from himself, examining his work from within his immersion in it, and the references and styles of analysis we would use to demonstrate the larger significance of that work beyond its proximate referents would not be identical.
Are those friends of Falola's concerned that my using Falola's name in the initiative means suggesting Falola is my partner, has given his blessing or I am taking advantage of his name?
Falola's name has reached a level that it can be used by others. The resonance of the name has risen above the generality occupied by most of humanity, whose names, strategic as they are as markers of individuality, demonstrate varied levels of resonance, of different kinds of force within and beyond those directly acquainted with them.
Just like we name theories in terms of the names of those who construct them, or who inspire them, we can do the same for Falola. How ethical is this use, becomes the question.
I believe I have established my parameters for drawing my conclusions about what one may learn about Falola's creativity. My various writings on Falola, of which more are forthcoming, in the context of my published explorations on various philosophies, creativities and creative individuals, makes clear my cognitive enablement for this activity.
I also want to move Falola scholarship from being limited to being part of academic offerings, such as a list of books on a reading list, to a stand alone yet multidisciplinarily integrative subject of study,
a multidisciplinary complex of explorations of different subjects unified round a multiplicity of centres represented by forms of creativity, engaging these within a pedagogical context involving direct contact with people beyond such conferences as the Falola conferences, vital landmarks in Falola scholarship though they are.
How do we move from what has been written on Falola, from conference discussions of Falola's work, to studying this work in a pedagogical context?
Is Falola's oeuvre expansive enough to sustain or act as the inspirational matrix for a critical examination of approaches to various questions in various disciplines, examining how these diversities may be engaged with simultaneously from various disciplinary orientations, the entirety grounded in examinations of individual and group efforts to shape meaning out of reality, as described by Falola in In Praise of Greatness and as I highlight in a forthcoming essay on that book in relation to Yoruba theories of self and circumstance, free will and fate?
I am interested in contributing to shaping an approach to Falola Studies that includes and goes beyond books and conferences on Falola's work to courses on this work, developing a structure of learning that includes and goes beyond the more general concerns of his scholarship to examining their emergence from the cognitive dynamism of a creative persona whose creativity may be explored by others and adapted to one's use.
Great thanks
toyin