Convergence and Divergence of Politics and Spirituality in the Yoruba Origin Ifa System of Knowledge: A Dilemma Emerging from Conflicts Between Akin Ogundiran as Scholarly Book Author and Social Media Contributor

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

Apologies if this has been posted earlier.

                                                                                                     

                                                                         

          Convergence and Divergence of Politics and Spirituality in the Yoruba Origin Ifa System of Knowledge

 A Dilemma Emerging from Conflicts Between Akin Ogundiran as Scholarly Book Author and Social Media Contributor

                                                                          Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                                                                        Compcros

                                                         Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

                                             "Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

 

The Power of Akinwunmi Ogundiran's The Yoruba: A New History

I deeply admire Akinwunmi Ogundiran's The Yoruba : A New History, as demonstrated by a couple of essays I have written on it and posted online.

These are "In Search of the Children of Ọmọlúàbí: Yorùbá as Way of Life Rather than as Ethnic Identity: Reading Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yorùbá: A New History 1: The Preface and the Introduction" and "Struggle, Triumph, Destruction and Resurgence in Yoruba History as a Great Human Narrative: Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yoruba : A New History."

Problematic Mono-Casual Interpretation of Ifa in Relation to Yoruba History in the Book

As suggested by another piece I wrote and also posted online, "The Dilemma of a Babaláwo :  Ogunbiodun and the Tension between Politics and Spirituality in Classical Ifè," one involving an imaginary character inspired by the book, I am also challenged by what I understand as the book's mono-causal account of the role of the Ifa knowledge system in constructing what became the spiritual centrality of Ife in Yoruba history and culture. 

This account is developed in the subsections "Òrìsà: Theogonic and Intellectual Basis of the Yorùbá Community of Practice" and "Summing Up'' on pages 128-139. These are part of "Section 3 : Knowledge Capital and Referentiality" under  "Part II: Birth of the Yoruba Community of Practice."

Ogundiran describes instrumentalist constructions of ese ifa, Ifa literary texts, by the Ife babaláwo, narratives constructed in reworking the mythic canon in such a way as to make Ife the centre of the Yoruba cosmos.

It is a majestic piece of writing. 

My problem with it is that I see it as needing to be more nuanced.

Ogundiran's introduction is eloquent on his relying on his critical relationship with the insider perspectives of indigenous practitioners of Yoruba spirituality. 

To what degree does that scintillating section of Ogundrian's book on Ifa in relation to Ife represent this critical relationship?

Has Ogundiran not tilted too far in the direction of analytical dissection while neglecting empathetic relation with his subject, a balance vital for discussing spirituality, which  Ifa is?

Between Spirituality, Politics and Commerce

Does Ogundiran's  chapter on knowledge capital in relation to Ifa not suggest that the spiritual eminence of Ife as contributed to by the Ife babalawo was purely or largely a matter of artifice, of politically and commercially calculated manipulation  of the minds of gullible people?

Yes, spirituality is significantly, if not largely a human construct. 

But is that all it is?

Does it not often suggest elements of the numinous, of qualities not reducible to human manipulation, effects which transcend human encapsulation, of efforts to reach beyond the circumscriptions of the human universe?

Could that section have been written in a more tentative style rather than the definitive  manner in which Ogundiran constructed it, a more cautious orientation allowing for a sensitivity to the balance of the genuinely spiritual and philosophical and the politically and economically calculating, the latter being Ogundiran's focus on his account of Ifa in that section of his book?

Between Ogundiran as Scholarly Book Author and Ogundiran as Social Media Commentator on the Composition of Ifa Literature

My dilemma emerges with the next observation I hereby make.

I observe in Ogundiran himself an unresolved contradiction between his book and his public engagement.

He was vehement in condemning my creation of new ese ifa, Ifa literature, in a debate on the USA-Africa Dialogues Series Google Group, well after his book had been published, a book that is the culmination of decades of scholarly growth. He declared that if I knew how ese ifa were composed, I would not presume to compose  new ese ifa.

I reproduce below selections from his comments, breaking the passage into paragraphs for greater clarity:

There is literature in Ifa. We all know this. However, to declare on this forum that Ifa is just literature is mindboggling. And then to claim that he is now creating his own body of Ifa texts is ---. If he understands how Ifa texts are created, he would have known that such remarks are unserious (and I'm generous here).

He can manipulate the Ifa texts to create literature for his pleasure and creative writing, but it will not be called Ifa. Many of us in our high school days adapted the Songs of Solomon to write love poems to our girlfriends- Bọsẹ, Kudi, and Ego, etc.-- but we were not writing a new version of Songs of Solomon. 

Adepoju has the freedom to rewrite Ifa texts, but he does not have the right to call them Ifa texts.

Therefore, those who take the spirituality of Ifa seriously have the right to question Toyin's motive... (though they can't stop him).

I asked him to explain his understanding of the point of intersection between the sacred and the profane, the constructed and the non-constructed in ese ifa, arguing that his book argues for the knowledge capital that defines Yoruba culture, using his own terms, as a construct and therefore continually  in process.

He responded that my reading of his book was perverted.

It was after this exchange, that in my ongoing study of Ogundiran's book that I read the section on the Ife babalawo.

Other Yoruba scholars of Yoruba culture, Michael Afolayan and Olayinka Agbetuyi, specifically, were also  virulently critical about my initiative of composing new ese ifa, with Agbetuyi  arguing that ese ifa were composed by divine inspiration, a view I described as unsustainable.

What is my dilemma here?

It is about how to address what I understand about the self contradiction of the book and the author's own contradiction of his  book within that debate, without seeming to be trying to spite him by addressing what I see as a limitation of  a powerful book, a limitation that is a stimulus to future explorations, as all rich books ought to be.

Ogundiran described my ese ifa creating initiative  as charlatanry  because it is based on ignorance of how ese ifa are created.

Yet, he argues meticulously in his own book, how such constructions were  carried out purely through the instrumentalist, politically  calculating strategies of Ife babalawo, not through any special, inspired or inexplicable  techniques.

A group of people decide they want to shape public opinion in particular ways and thereby make up  stories that advance their views, thereby becoming strategic to the centrality Ife gained in the Yoruba cultural universe. 

If the Ife babalawo can do it, why not Adepoju, myself?

The evidence of the multivalent character of ese ifa is clear, its varied ideological orientations, responding to various factors in the changing course of Yoruba history, are  luminous for all to see, yet some Yoruba scholars defending Yoruba culture are responding to this literary tradition as if its not  literature first and foremost, a human construct created by human minds for human ends, relating these ends to the spiritual, though still grounded in human social and historical contexts and cognitive possibilities.

Between Critical and Fundamentalist Approaches to Sacred Texts

Why do some scholars approach this subject in a manner closer to fundamentalist religiosity than to critical scholarly orientations rooted in the study of the hermeneutics of sacred texts?

These responses suggest  an ahistorical and asocial orientation that ignores centuries of scholarship in sacred texts, an approach that echoes literalist readings of the Bible that proceed as if the centuries of development of critical Biblical hermeneutics  did not occur, perspectives  operating as if the demonstration of the imaginative and literary character of Biblical literature and religious texts in general have not been strategic to these fields for centuries.

Is the subject of any significance beyond the disagreements of people on a listserve, the USAAfrica Dialogues Series Google Group?

My dilemma has been in how to present the subject in way that avoids the spirit of ''I told you so, did I not?'' as I demonstrate Ogundiran's negation of his own views by referencing his own book. 

The subject needs to be treated in terms of the history and philosophy of religion, of the hermeneutics of Ifa, of the relationship between the human and the divine, of matter and spirit, tensions emerging from aspiring to move beyond the immediate  possibilities of experience though unavoidably grounded within them.

Closed and Open Canon Cultures in Religion 

I see the contradictions in the orientations of these scholars and Ogundiran in particular, in relation to my composition of new ese ifa, as evidence of the seductive power of the closed canon dogma of Christianity, reflecting similar but looser canonizing strategies in Judaism and Islam.

The power of this dogma is such that even a scholar who had compellingly  described an aspect of the constructed nature of ese ifa in its centrality to a central feature of Yoruba spiritual and political history is able to argue, without any qualification, for the ''charlatanry," of an effort to do what has been done from day one, constructing ese ifa as has always been the case.

He argues that the person who is doing so is treating ese ifa as if its only literature, while his own book not only makes a strong case for that perspective but describes the particularly strategic ese ifa he references as literature created, not under any kind of inspiration or lofty vision but purely for the sake of constructing fictional narratives to shape the minds of unsuspecting people who relate to the fiction as historical fact.

The closed canon dogma consists in the belief that the scriptures of a religion are not expandable after the cannon has been fixed by the authorities of that religion at a point in time.

A particularly strong demonstration of  this is  Islam, in which the Koran, described as divine revelation given to one person, cannot be expanded nor can any new scriptures be created in Islam.

Christianity has fixed a selection of texts known as the Bible and decided that not only can no new texts be added to the Bible, there shall be no new scriptures  in Christianity.

Judaism seems to have done something similar, but it seem to demonstrate a greater degree of flexibility   as demonstrated by its greater number of foundational scriptures and such later texts as the Zohar, described as an interpretation of the esoteric interior of fundamental Jewish scripture and the stories of Nahman  of Bratslav, texts which have achieved canonical  status  within the Jewish  Hasidic sub-community,  complementing other foundational texts such as  the Talmud.

Thus, one may describe, adapting Karl Popper on social theory, the understanding of Islam and Christianity as representing closed scriptural canons and Judaism as representing a semi-open scriptural canon.

Contrasting with this are the largely open canons represented by Hindu and Buddhist scripture, in which the earlier, foundational scriptures, such as the Rig Veda, the Mahabharata and the Upanishads in Hinduism or dialogues of the Buddha, in Buddhism, remain central, but they co-exist with a centuries long and perhaps endless  unfolding of new texts serving as the scriptural basis of new schools with these religions, such as the Shiva Sutras of Vasugupta, which seems to have initiated the Trika or Kashmiri Shaivite school of Hinduism.

Given the non-centralized character of social organization in the global Ifa community and its Orisa community mother matrix, it seems the open canon approach is likely to be that most fitted to the tradition, an approach represented by the centuries of construction of ese ifa by different, anonymous verbal artists, although within the context of traditional Ifa training and application,  and one which I am taking forward outside membership within traditional forms of training within these communities, operating instead an individualized, significantly self constructed method of relating with the spirituality.

Between Mental Construction and Inspiration

Where does mental construction end and inspiration begin?

Is inspiration separable  from mental construction?