African Scholars and Books on Theoretical Framework

[Sabella]

Dear Colleagues,

I was wondering if anyone here has written a book or can recommend a book that approaches issues and phenomena in and about Africa using African-centric theoretical frameworks. Going forward, I’d like to quote more African scholars in my work and rely more on the theories they originated. Thank you and have a great week.

Cordially,

Sabella

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Fine one, Sabella.

The field you reference is represented by books as well as essays.

Some works of the kind you want are also comparative- harmonising Africa-centric theories and non-African theories in the exploration of exclusively African or African and non-African phenomena.

Please allow me to use this opportunity in clarifying my own understanding as I respond to your request. 

I use the terms Africa-centric, Africa-centred and Afro-centric interchangeably,  my use of these terms overlapping with Molefi Asante's Afro-centrism, a pioneer in this field.

The Nature and Significance of Theory

I understand theory as referring to efforts to provide large scale explanations of phenomena, linking diverse phenomena or varied examples of the same phenomenon, in terms of a unifying body of ideas.

Through such efforts at moving between the particular and the general, aspects of existence or existence as a whole are understood in terms of a coherence that makes  them particularly meaningful, an understanding of theory relevant across disciplines, even though ideas of meaningfuless might differ between disciplines.

One of the great strengths of the Western academy is it's centralisation of theory as  continually developing, contested, divergent and convergent approaches to making sense of human existence and its cosmic context.

This has often been demonstrated in terms of aspirations to understand reality in it's universal character, a controversial but deeply fertile aspiration even when the universal is understood as largely perceptible through the prism of the local, a modification emerging in the more recent history of the Western academy, as in such a movement as Post-Modernism. 

All cultures are grounded in theories because without explanatory frameworks, people would not be able to make sense of existence.

Complementing biological needs, are psychological needs, at the heart of which is the need to have life make sense, even if in a non-ratiocinative but emotional manner. 

Making sense of existence in terms of structures of ideas that clarify it's diversity, multiplicity and development constitutes the construction of theory, of which religions and philosophies are the best known examples.

Africa-Centric Theory in Action  Within and Beyond  Africana Contexts 

African-centric theory can be divided into two main, though overlapping camps, among other classificatory possibilities within or outside this main classification.

One camp operates purely within the Africana context, deriving ideas from this framework and applying it to those contexts alone.

The other aspires to have these ideas illuminate contexts within and beyond Africa.

Toyin Falola's essays "Ritual Archives" and "Pluriversalism", both in the Toyin Falola Reader, their ideas perhaps taken further in Falola's new book Decolonizing African Studies: Knowledge Production, Agency, advocate understanding the approaches to knowledge and the underlying logic of classical African knowledge systems, their epistemologies and metaphysics, and using them as means of exploring human experience in general.

This aspiration is complenented by another division within African centred theory, that directed purely at the study of African phenomena, perhaps distilling understanding from African thought, in studying African phenomena alone.

Representative of theory derived from African thought and directed purely at African phenomena is Rowland Abiodun's Owe/Oriki theory, a description of Yoruba aesthetics in terms  of the correlation of the visual and verbal arts as two aspects of a semiotic whole representing efforts to explore the ultimate sources of existence, bringing these explorations to bear in human life, as demonstrated in his Yoruba Art and Language:Seeking the African in African Art.

    Esuneutics Within and 

    Beyond Africana Contexts

Also developing an understanding of hermeneutics, theory of interpretation, from Yoruba thought, in relation to the Africana experience, integrating African and African-American contexts, is Henry Luis Gates Jrs The Signifying Monkey, exploring the hermeneutics of  Yoruba origin Ifa divination through the prism of the deity Eshu, the central hermeneute of the system.

Gates book is itself part of what may be described as the field of Esuneutics, as named  by Obododimma Oha in "The Esu Paradigm in the Semiotics of Identity and Community",

describing the term as coming from the online literary group Krazitivity, a field the name of which is a counterpoint to the derivativation of the Western term "hermeneutics", theory of interpretation, from the name of Hermes, the ancient Greek messenger deity and interpreter of the messages of the gods, a role also played by the Yoruba origin deity Eshu in his spread from Yorubaland to Benin in Nigeria, perhaps to Dahomey and certainly to the Americas, a deity resonating with such close variants as the Voodoo Papa Legba and the correlative Igbo Agwu, convergences suggesting the possibility of the Eshu motif as a unifying African hermeneutic symbol and idea source. 

The universal possibilities of the Eshu motif, within and  beyond Africana contexts, are demonstrated by my  

"Spatial Navigation as a Hermeneutic Paradigm: Ifa, Heidegger and Calvino", exploring spatial navigation as a primary human orientation and its relationship  to navigating textual space and reality in general, as demonstrated by correlations with ideas on spatial navigation from Western experiential, literary and philosophical contexts, thereby creating a multicultural dialogue suggesting humanity's unity in diversity in terms of spatial navigation in a physical, textual and abstract sense, an approach similar to that employed by Malcolm Allen in describing British psychoanalysis in "Renewal or Retreat?: Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy at the Crossroads". 

To Be Continued

Thanks

Toyin

                                                  

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[Sabella Abidde]

Good evening Toyin,

Thank you, thank you, and thank you so very much for this. I appreciate it. As I was editing my twelfth book, it dawned on me that most of the works I have quoted are by non-African scholars.

Ironically, even the African-educated and African-based scholars cite mostly European and North American scholars. This is especially so in terms of theoretical frameworks. A week earlier, this anomaly formed part of the discussion I had with a senior scholar in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

And moments before I posted my call-for-help, I was chatting with a Nigerian scholar based in Canada and this issue also came up. It was at that point that I knew I had to ask for help, for direction.

I am a generalist in terms of my research and writing. However, Africa features prominently in my scholarship. So, I would like to introduce my readers to scholars from our part of the world. In addition, I would like to – beginning in spring 2023 – incorporate African-centric theories into my writings and classroom activities.

Scholars, here and at the ASRF forum, have recommended a total of twelve books/articles. I will add to my list of must-buy Prof. Toyin Falola's “The Toyin Falola Reader on African Culture, Nationalism, Development,” and “Epistemologies, and Decolonizing African Studies: Knowledge Production, Agency.”

I had hoped to spend my summer holiday in my village deep in the creeks of the Niger Delta. I guess I will have to drag several books and journal articles with me.

Again, thanks for coming to my rescue. Stay safe, stay well, and have a great week.

Best regards,

Sabella

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African Scholars and Intellectuals in North American Academies

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Great thanks.

 

Could you please give the list of the twelve books/articles recommended  so one could get them?

 

With you having mentioned the creeks of the  Niger Delta, I must mention Nimi Wariboko's work constructing theory at the intersection of Kalabari, Pentecostal and Continental thought, which I did in my first draft of my response but which draft my phone failed to save as I moved on to something else, leading me to postpone the Wariboko references for further development of my response.

 

Niger Delta topography, it's creeks and rivers, resonate in at least one example of Wariboko's extensive discussions of Kalabari thought, there being perhaps other such topographical references which I might have missed.

 

The  Western intellectual system is so powerful, so richly constructed in its disciplinary totalizing, its  institutions so solid, its scholars so unrelentingly productive with publishers churning out books and articles at terrific speed and volume, that, particularly for people whose own populations are new to the widespread art of writing and publishing, as different from India, China and Japan and the Arab and Persian worlds, for example, it could take serious effort to think outside the theoretical constructs of the Western academy as well as to seek scholars not operating within its mainstream, a mainstream I wonder if African centred studies are a part of.

 

Another challenge we face as Africans is that our education is conducted largely within the embrace of systems that not only have no direct relationship with our endogenous realities but represent highly abstract modes of thought, which, in trying to abstract the essences and universality of phenomena,  focus largely on the intellectual plane, a style of thinking most highly developed in Western non-artistic thought and which needs to be addressed by those who wish to integrate Western and non-Western thought, in the latter's greater blend of the concrete and the abstract, as represented, for example, by Sara Allen's exploration of the role of naturalistic metaphors in classical Chinese thought, The Way of Water and the Sprouts of Virtue.

 

The environmental and human density of the Niger Delta, for example, it's powerful variety of naturalistic forms, it's correlation between natural resources and humanity at different levels of human sensitivity to nature,  it's demonstration of the ongoing struggle between nature's endowments and human need, greed and inhumanity to both fellow humans and nature, implies a great resource for reflection on such subjects, possibly inspiring theory correlating nature, humanity and cosmos.

 

Such exploration could  range from the metaphysical correlates between nature's variety in unity  and cosmic multiplicity and synthesis, as such thinking is described of the thought of Yoruba Ijala poetry by Wole Soyinka in Myth, Literature and the African World- "Ijala celebrates not only the deity, Ogun the hunter, but animal and plant life, the relationships of growing things and the insights of man into the secrets of the universe"- and by Abiola Irele in "Tradition and the Yoruba Writer: Fagunwa, Tutuola and Soyinka" and developed in a different manner  by Ayi Kwei Armah from Akan thought in The  Healers, perspectives cosonant with Gottlieb's account of Being forest thought  in Sheridan and Nyamweru's edited African Sacred Groves.

 

These investigations could also question how this intersection between multiplicity and unity may be best explored, the sensory, critical and visionary range described of Yoruba epistemology by  Babatunde Lawal's  "Aworan: Representing the Self and it's Metaphysical Other in Yoruba Art,'' significantly correlative with African thought generally, or purely through Aristotle's focus, in his Metaphysics, on ratiocinative thought, in moving from sensory perception to seeking unities underlying what is perceived by the senses?

 

What may the ecological complexity and historical challenges of the Niger Delta, for example, contribute to international relations theory? If it has not yet, could African thought gain from such an orientation as   Stephen Chan's The Zen of International Relations: International Relations Theory from East to West, discussing international relations theory across cultures and culminating in exploring international relations in terms of Chinese philosophy, of which Zen Buddhism is an aspect?

 

What contribution could be made to theory construction  in such contexts by such works as the Yoruba Ifa ecological and cosmological poem ''Ayajo Asuwada'', emphasising ''asuwa'' togetherness, as a cosmological and biological principle, as   discussed by Akinsola Akiwowo in ''Contributions to the Sociology of Knowledge from an African Oral Poetry'', a togetherness that is yet a unity in which individuality is strategic, as represented by the Yoruba concept ''iwa'', rendered as ''essential being'' by Rowland Abiodun in Yoruba Art and Language, an individuality empowered by ''ase'', pervasive life force imbuing each existent with unique creative capacity, as  described of that idea in Drewal et al's Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought,  illustrating that iconception  with Yoruba visual art depicting individuality in multiplicity, an idea correlative with Achebe on the Igbo concept  ''ike'' in ''The Igbo World and its Art' summed up in the expression ''everyone and his own''?

 

Niger Delta thought has a rich structure of ideas and practices at the convergence of nature, human activity and their abstraction in terms of symbols, as represented by Nsibidi visual, spatial and performative symbolism in  it's use by Ekpe/Mgbe esotericism, but the epistemology and metaphysics of Nsibidi, it's unifying logic  across it's visual, performative and spatial forms seems to be kept secret by Ekpe/Mgbe, not helpful to efforts to mine it for inspiration in developing theory, an effort,which I undertake, however, in Nisibidi Ekpuk Philosophy and Mysticism. Falola's edited Victor Ekpuk: Connecting Lines Across Space and Time, further indicates such possibilities in discussing Ekpuk's work as the most prominent artist inspired by Nsibidi. 

 

Cajetan Iheka's Ecological Violence, Agency, and Postcolonial Resistance in African Literature, partly inspired by Niger Delta history, exploring that and related issues through the lens of eco-criticism, could motivate questions about how theory development could be inspired by African contexts, illuminating both those contexts and other realities, the trans- cultural and trans-geographical illumination of theory developed within particular geographical and cultural contexts being central to the global power of Western thought and its learning systems.

 

A revolution in approaches to theory might be needed, particularly for those who wish to escape the monocentrism of some Western theory.

 

There might need to be a greater emphasis on the study of theory as both a creative act, an act of construction and a  process of critical assimilation, constructing one's own theories as well as studying the theories of others, doing this with reference to the inspirational powers of one's  mind,  of one's immediate and larger human, natural and technological environments, in dialogue with theory construction across a broad range of cultures.

 

Such creative re-orientations have already taken place in African literature and African art, and, to some degree, African philosophy, as creatives in those zones construct their own universes of thought and expression, generating unique identities while also distilling value from the Western matrix.

 

 Africa centred theory, generally speaking, as cutting across disciplines, could learn from those examples.

 

Thanks

 

Toyin 

 

 

 

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