Domesticating in Africa Knowledge on Africa from Beyond Africa : Reflections of a Scholar and Publisher
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Domesticating in Africa Knowledge on Africa from Beyond Africa
Reflections of a Scholar and Publisher
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Abstract
An essay inspired by the interests of Rowland Abiodun, in relation to his Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art, published by Cambridge University Press in 2014, on how such books could be made readily available to Africans, in general, and Nigerians, in particular, whose cultures the books are about.
Not long after its publication, I held in my hands Rowland Abiodun’s Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art, having just bought it from the flagship bookshop of the publishers, Cambridge University Press, on Trinity Street, Cambridge.
Surrounded by others going about their business, on a street made colourful by Cambridge’s mix of buildings of very different ages, ancient to modern, I held in my hand Abiodun’s handsomely bound book, exquisitely designed, published by one of the world’s most prestigious publishers, a centuries old business representing a core of the global scholarly world’s publishing output, a part of one of the most impactful and oldest universities in history, and wondered if I could afford to keep the book. At 80 pounds, could I afford it?
It was the work of a master whose writings had long been a beacon for me in African Studies, at the intersection of literature, art, philosophy and religion, a book distilling the essence of his vision and achievement. Publishing with Cambridge is a sign of scholarly consolidation, given the uncompromisingly rigorous and yet lucidly expressed character of their books, some of the most significant works in the history of scholarship, strategic for various fields.
If I kept the book, however, how would I pay my rent? How would I eat? 80 pounds, the price of the book in hardback, the only print edition available, was a lot of money for the self-employed Independent Scholar that I was. I returned the book and got my money back.
I eventually got a review copy of the book with the help of Abiodun. My review, “Yoruba Aesthetics at the Confluence of Disciplines” published on academia.edu, Amazon, and other platforms, mapped Abiodun’s scholarly journey, from his first publications in the 1970s to the consolidation, rethinking and new theoretical unification represented by the book. I also evoked, unknown to me at the time, but suggested to me as I write this, my own journey with Abiodun’s work, a quest for interdisciplinary synthesis, particularly in African cultures, a quest that has been the core of Abiodun’s research project for more than 50 years.
The dilemma of the intellectually hungry but little monied scholar on that day in Cambridge evokes a question strategic for African scholarship and culture. Yoruba Art and Language is the distillation of Abiodun’s journey of learning in Yoruba culture as a child, adult and scholar, yet how accessible is that book to those whom the book is about, his fellow Yoruba people in Nigeria, talk less others in the same country and perhaps even the same continent as them?
Abiodun migrated to the US in 1989 after taking to a high level his research at the then University of Ife in Nigeria. He had blossomed in an environment where a constellation of dynamic scholars and institutional and financial support for research made the university and particularly its Institute of African Studies a global centre of the field during the 1970s and 1980s. Then, the Nigerian university system began to suffer serious challenges.
By the late 1980s, African economies generally were deeply troubled. The resulting exodus of scholars from Nigeria and Africa contributed significantly to the current centering of African Studies in the US, where these scholars are now concentrated, and the decline in prominence of previous African centers of this field of study, such as the then University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, and Makerere University, Uganda.
Abiodun has gained further prominence in his career, beyond even his Ife achievement. At Ife, he had already become a professor, publishing some of his most important works, before emigrating. But a question haunts the work of such achievers as himself operating outside the shores of the African environments which they study while based abroad.
Who is reading their work? Who can afford to buy their books? How many people across the world can purchase those texts? With reference to magnificent books on Yoruba Studies regularly coming out of the US, books often representing decades, at times a lifetime of effort, distilling years of aspiration, study and achievement, to what degree can these books impact the populations they study, and their immediate national and continental neighbours?
Western scholarship, publishers, educational institutions, economies and societies constitute a seamless web facilitating significant breadth of access to the products of scholarship published in those economies, even though scholarly works are often expensive even in those environments where they are published in huge numbers. Libraries and second-hand bookshops do a lot to close the gap in access to knowledge created by the difference between the purchasing power of most people in those societies and the high cost of those books.
In African social and economic systems, possibly, and in Nigeria, certainly, which I am better informed about, this is not the case. The cost of those books published abroad is multiplied by the weakness of African currencies compared to such Western currencies as the US dollar and the British pound sterling. The situation implies that the exodus of a good number of African and particularly Nigerian scholars to the West in the 1980s and 90s needs to be addressed in terms of a reverse migration of ideas. How may the work of these emigres, among the most important publications in their respective fields, be made readily accessible to the populations their works are often about?
One approach might be to publish cheaper African or Nigerian editions of these books, leading me to ask certain questions. I suspect a central future for reading in Nigeria is online, perhaps more so than offline. This is suggested to me by the vitality of the Nigerian online ecosystem, particularly as represented by social media, particularly Facebook, and to some degree, Twitter, and dedicated online news media, such as Sahara Reporters and Premium Times.
Eases of access to online platforms blocks out the paucity of libraries in Nigeria, leaving only cost of Internet subscription and quality of Internet service as the major challenges, followed by access to electricity to charge electronic devices. If book and journal publishers choose to develop this angle, how may one differentiate products meant exclusively for such low-income economies as that of Nigeria and more robust economies, as in the West?
Even then, print texts are irreplaceable. What kind of relationship between the quality of printing, the production cost of a book and the selling price of the work would be viable for the Nigerian market, a large population but with a weak economy? How well could such books be distributed within Nigeria’s existing book selling network, which still requires significant growth to achieve robustness? Should such projects be seen as long-haul initiatives, in which economic returns and general and institutional impact are projected for the long run rather than for immediate or other shorter-term returns? What may the scholarly book market in Nigeria learn from the republishing in Nigeria, following their debut abroad, of the works of such novelists as Chimamanda Adichie, Ben Okri and Nnedi Okorafor?
In relation to my interest in classical African art and thought, I also wonder: how may a print version of an art book of the highest global standards be brought out by a publisher in Nigeria? Will they need to rely on printing presses in Nigeria or elsewhere, as in Asia, now a centre of printing for various publishers across the world?
Nigeria is deeply influenced by Christianity and Islam. Such works as I have in mind are often explorations in classical African philosophy and its spiritual and artistic implications, a framework often seen as antithetical to Christianity and Islam, the now dominant religions in Nigeria. What factors could motivate people within such an ideological context to buy such books?
Further reflecting my interest in understanding an environment whose possibilities inspire me but which I am little informed about, I wonder about how developed the study of African philosophy, in general, and Yoruba philosophy and aesthetics, in particular, major interests of mine, are in the Nigerian academy. I am interested in works like Yoruba Art and Language that suggest the huge wealth of philosophical thought in African languages. To what degree has Nigerian academia assimilated that understanding?
Are courses taught significantly in this field, particularly in relation to art, the province of one of my particular interests? What room is there for new or further development along these lines? What is the scope of reading in Nigeria generally in relation to possibly clearly written but sophisticated and powerful texts, such as Abiodun’s book?
The knowledge represented by the work of these scholars needs to travel back to where this knowledge was sourced so as to enrich the source. This would facilitate the further development of indigenous platforms from which vast possibilities open up for constructing the present and the future.
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