Scholarship and the Creative Process : Akinwumi Ogundiran on Contemplative Observation and the Distillation of Learning in Writing The Yoruba : A New History

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

                                                   Scholarship and the Creative Process 

                  Akinwumi Ogundiran on Contemplative Observation and the Distillation of Learning

                                                                              in Writing 

                                                                 The Yoruba : A New History

                                              A Dialogue Compiled by Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                                                             Abstract

How are great ideas developed? How are powerful insights cultivated and memorable distillations of understanding constructed? How may one telescope a universe of knowing into a few words that resonate unendingly in the minds of people? Akinwumi Ogundiran develops a magnificent image crystallising Yoruba origin Orisa cosmology in his book The Yoruba : A New History, leading me to wonder, in a conversation with him, how he did it.

 His response is almost as rich as the idea being discussed, dramaritising a hermeneutics of silence in relation to a hermeneutics of speech,  the plenitude of knowing in tension with the limitations of expressive force, particularly in the mono-dimensional world of writing. The email discussion of 13th-14th November 2021 is reproduced below.

 

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju:

I wonder what led you to craft the image of Orisa cosmology in terms of mirrors generating an infinity of reflections in your Yoruba : A New History.

 

I find the image so compelling:

 

Ilé-Ifè...attained referential status through...translating those deities that had regional appeal into a system of filial relationships and using them as parallel mirrors for viewing and reflecting on the everyday social lives.

 

The light bouncing from these everyday lives, to borrow the lingo of optical physics, created the infinity effect on these parallel mirrors—the òrìṣà pantheon. The òrìṣà offered multiple angles to view everyday lives in a series of reflections that receded into an infinite distance.

 

It would take deep learning, knowledge, and expertise to observe, read, and interpret these reflections. And, inasmuch as the everyday life is not static, the pantheon could not be static. New deities (new parallel mirrors) were therefore created from time to time to capture and account for these new everyday experiences.

...

This system became an epistemology and a compass for navigating life’s journey and memory, managing both social order and turbulence, exploring the relationships between the earthly and the spiritual worlds, and seeking meanings.

( 128, 129, 130)

 

Akinwumi Ogundiran:

You asked me why I crafted the image of Orisa cosmology in terms of mirrors generating an infinity of reflections in my book The Yoruba: A New History (pg. 129). This is a loaded question, and I feel this medium is inadequate to respond. I cannot answer the question in one sentence. I can only discuss it. I have noticed that you keep going back to this subject in your analysis of the book. The paragraph you referred to [ broken into three paragraphs in the quotation above for easier online reading ]  took me months to write as I struggled to translate my observations and conclusions into text. I still feel it’s incomplete, but I had to let go.

 

I came to the conclusion you referenced after spending many years in Orisa temples and shrines, watching priests, priestesses, and their clients and congregations perform rituals, speak about the Orisa, and live the way of the Orisa. I had the privilege to follow these intellectuals into some of the deep recesses of temples, groves, and shrines. Most days, I did not ask questions. I just sat, observed, and listened to what was going on around me. Those moments of quietude were sometimes more insightful than moments of verbal exchanges. I have also read hundreds of books and articles on Orisa and benefitted from the insights of several authors. 

 

Some societies recorded their experience in writing or by building monuments. Some used mythologies to document their experience. The ancestral Yoruba documented, theorized, and explained their experience by creating mythologies associated with specific Orisa personalities that matched a particular experience.

Let me add that the ancestral Yoruba considered themselves as the manifestation of the Orisa-Nla on earth, and they aspired to attain the state of divinity when they passed on (to become Orisa). Therefore, they used the Orisa cosmology/pantheon to seek meaning and projected their anxieties, aspirations, and anticipation onto the Orisa canvas or screen. In this regard, the Orisa cosmology is (among other things) a discursive medium of what was, what is, and what will/might be.

Orisa cosmology is a multilayered sediment of time (similar to stratigraphy in archaeology or geology) that contains the transcripts, nuggets, and fragments of Yoruba history. Therefore, you cannot write a holistic and deep Yoruba history without the Orisa cosmology. It is the archive and laboratory of Yoruba history, philosophy, sociology, and psychology; the parallel mirrors that project an infinity of reflections about the past, present, and future. 

 

I hope this explanation is helpful, but I will admit that there is more to write in response to your question. There may be an essay in the making on this. 

 

Thank you for critically engaging the book and pushing it into a new terrain of contemplation and analysis, sometimes beyond my comfort zone as a historian. I had hoped this would happen, that the book would inspire philosophers, cultural critics, artists, writers, and others to develop new imaginations and create new works.

 My ongoing engagement with Ogundiran's book can be followed through this link Yoruba and African History as a Quest for Meaning : An Exploratory Journey with Akinwumi  Ogundiran's The Yoruba : A New History.