Developing a Historiographic Method Inspired by Yoruba Thought 1 : Motivated by Akinwumi Ogundiran’s The Yoruba : A New History, on Yoruba History as a Quest for Meaning
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Developing a Historiographic Method Inspired by Yoruba Thought
1
Motivated by Akinwumi
Ogundiran’s The Yoruba : A New History
on
Yoruba History as a Quest for Meaning
Image and Text: Opon Ifa as Arcane Presence
"An opon ifa is a babalawo," states Olabiyi Yai in "In Praise of Metonymy: The Concepts of "Tradition" and "Creativity" in the Transmission of Yoruba Artistry over Time and Space," of the compact divination platform of the Yoruba origin Ifa system of knowledge, in relation to the image of the babalawo, the adept in the esoteric knowledge of Ifa, who uses the opon ifa in divining, although with the spread of Ifa beyond Africa, the divinatory practice has been taken up by people outside that priestly class.
As in a number of his tantalizing ideas, I dont recall Yai elaborating at length on this notion, on his conflation of the identity of an object with human identity, leaving such pregnant concepts for others to develop.
Some particularly visually powerful opon ifa as the one above, and the others in this essay, evoke Yai's intersecting of inanimate form and animate identity, of human artistic creation and the fashioning of self in terms of numinous potencies suggested by the image of the babalawo as a transactor between dimensions, listening to messages others cannot hear at the convergence of spirit and matter, the infinite and the temporal, ultimate possibility and its circumscribed expression in human life, the voice of orí, the self as an immortal embodiment of the self's potential aligned with the creator of the universe and orí, the self as perambulator within space and time.
This opon seems to brood in silent majesty, a beast of power in repose, eyes slightly closed in contemplation, the creature's skin carapaced with symbols of ancient wisdoms, the spiral of interdimensional unity and infinity, the mudfish of immersion within diverse but complementary dimensions, as the mudfish straddles water and earth, the snake of temporal recurrence, its body bent so its head is at the same level as the tail, evoking the return to birth though the portal of death, the cycle of being and becoming, the eyes unifying yesterday, today and tomorrow, throwing a stone today and hitting a bird yesterday, shaping possibilities at intersections of time, brother of the limping walk as you move simultaneously within here and there, within matter and spirit, you who are both small and big, short and tall, verandah too constricted for you but the groundnut shell your living room to expand luxuriously, O Eshu, we salute you.
Unknown master who created this compelling beauty in a time unknown, those of us farther down the river of time celebrate your power, awòran, the perceptual intelligence shaping àwòrán, that which is configured through the synthesis of perception and the wisdom of the creative hand, as Babatunde Lawal describes this principle of Yoruba aesthetics in his memorably titled "
Àwòrán: Representing the Self and Its Metaphysical Other in Yoruba Art."
Image source- Heritage Auctions.
“I understand your great, great, great grandson Akinwumi has produced a book, at the centre of which is an attempt as describing our exploits in great Ife.’’
“True. A remarkable
book. Possibly a landmark in Yorùbá Studies.”
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Abstract
An exploration of the possibility of writing a history of the Yoruba of West Africa inspired by Yoruba thought. The essay is galvanized by the inspiration of Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yoruba: A New History, 2020.
The essay is composed of four interrelated texts, three verbal one, visual. The central verbal text expounds the main ideas of the essay and runs from after the abstract to the end of the essay. The other verbal texts are secondary to the primary one and are interspersed across the main text, introduced within sections of it.
The first of these secondary verbal texts come after images of opon ifa and respond to those images. Immediately after these texts come a dialogical sequence reflecting on aspects of Ogundiran's book. The images, the texts that respond to them and the dialogical sequences, are indented in order to more clearly distinguish them from the main text.
Contents
Image and Text: Opon Ifa as Arcane Presence
Yoruba History through the Lens of Yoruba Thought
Ase
and Ori, Central Principles of Yoruba Thought
The Inspiration and Challenge of The Yoruba : A New History
Image and Text: Emptiness in Opon Ifa
Ogundiran on Yoruba Identity as Constituted through a Body of Ideas and Practices
Image and Text: Opon Ifa Histories and the Opon Ifa of Babalawo Labosinde
Methodological and Perspectival Challenges of The Yoruba : A New History
Image and Text:
Kolawole Ositola and the Quaternary Division of Opon Ifa
Using Ogundiran in Going Beyond Ogundiran
The Inspiration of Hegel
Reflective History
Philosophical History
Conjunctions and Disjunctions
Between Hegel and Ogundiran
The Relevance of Hegel's Philosophy of History and Phenomenology of Geist for a Historiography Inspired by Yoruba Thought
Sources
Yoruba Thought
Hegel
Thanks on Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yoruba : A New History
Yoruba History through the Lens of Yoruba Thought
This is a presentation of the broad outlines of a framework for an exploration of Yoruba history through the lens of Yoruba thought, ideas about the nature of existence developed in Yoruba civilization.
The purpose of this exercise is to demonstrate that it can be done. dramatizing the international portability of the ideas being discussed. For those new to the force of these ideas, I aspire to demonstrate their international portability, their ability able to travel across languages and cultures. I hope to introduce people to their beauty and power, encouraging their use as instruments of thought, even as formative matrices for how one sees the world. In relation to those already acquainted with Yoruba thought and arts, I offer perspectives on its interpretation and applicatory potential that are either new in the literature or which present extant understandings with striking force.
Ase
and Ori, Central Principles of Yoruba Thought
The foundations of this exercise are in two
central ideas of Yoruba thought. These are ase and ori. Ase is the idea that
all forms in existence are motivated by an inherent creative drive, expressed
in nature in terms of its dynamism and in conscious beings in terms of their
individual capacity for creative response to existence. Ori may be
described as the understanding of a conscious entity, and specifically
human beings, as both directed at the immediate contexts of their
existence and oriented towards infinity as embodying their ultimate
potential, of which their immediate existence is a limited expression.
This
is an interpretation of what may be called Ori Theory, which is the idea that a
conscious entity, particularly human beings, are composed of two
complementary aspects of identity.
One of these is the terrestrial self, represented by the
physical head, the brain that it enables, and the mind empowered by that brain,
as that mind is composed by the confluence of biology and social development.
The other is a deeper, more subtle identity, deriving from the origin of the self in a
zone beyond time and space, orun, the world of ultimate origins identified most
particularly with Olodumare, the creator of the universe and in interaction
with whom the ultimate potential of the self is constructed, a
potential of which the self's orientation during each lifetime is an
expression.
I
am not using these ideas as articles of faith, as dogmatic templates. I am
employing them as inspirational contexts shaping how I approach my subject.
Along these lines, Ase
Theory, as it may be called, sensitizes me to the scope of creativity, the
individuality of response, of people to their situations.
My
interest, in this context, is in the Yoruba principle of ''fun iwa ni oniwa,'' ''grant to each
existent the uniqueness of its being,'' as superbly described by Rowland
Abiodun in ''The Future of African Art Studies: An African Perspective'' and
his Yoruba Art and Language.
Within this context of individuality of
being, my interest is in developing a scope of appreciation of the possible significance of
events, actions and perspectives, identifying the contours or even essence of
individuality, as far as that may be understood in various contexts. Furthermore, assessing such identity from within its own self understanding, as far as that is possible
through empathetic and yet critical sensitivity.
The
inspiration of Ori Theory for me is in sensitizing me to the human being
as simultaneously oriented towards survival and towards seeking meaning. This complementary duality involves orientation towards the material
contexts of existence and towards efforts to understand this
context beyond the limitations of the human spatio-temporal nexus as an entity
emerging from the unknown into the world and departing at a time largely
unanticipated into a zone ultimately unknown though much speculated upon. This existential context predisposes the human being to live within
the space of reflection on the significance of the journey of life,
regardless of the explicitness of this reflective orientation.
These
ideas, in their fundamental descriptions in accounts of Yoruba thought, as well
as my interpretations of them, are not unique to Yoruba thought. They
exist within this context, however, in terms of a centrality and manner of
describing them that may identify the distinctive variant of these ideas
as represented by Yoruba philosophy.
I
thereby treat Yoruba thought, Yoruba philosophy and spirituality,
as a
unified body of ideas, and in a less definitive sense, as a body of orientations,
within which may be observed variations in responses to
these orientations and ideas. These variations include classical varieties of response. They also involve post-classical
variations, including the contemporary, such as my
interpretations presented here.
What
motivates this exercise?
The need to demonstrate that it can be done. A need motivated by the inspiration and challenge of Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yorùbá: A New History, 2020.
The Inspiration and Challenge of The Yoruba : A New History
Akinwumi Ogundiran’s The Yorùbá :
A New History is an inspiring and challenging book.
The ideational power, architectonic
force and sheer narrative potency of the work is undeniable.
It represents an opening into Yorùbá
history lucid enough to engage those new to the subject yet enabling
novel perspectives for the expert in the field.
Is it possible, however, to use Ogundiran’s aspirations, his methodological goals and methods, along with their realizations in the text, to take further the aspirations that energize that work?
The Yoruba: A New History is driven by the aspiration to a definitive demonstration of Yorùbá history as an epistemic progression, a development in the understanding of existence and how to relate to it, one might state, at the risk of weighing too heavily against the almost seamless combination of orientations that constitute the book’s multifaceted tapestry.
Image and Text: Emptiness in Opon Ifa
%20ed2.jpg?part=0.2&view=1)
The back of an object, as with the opon ifa above, is often taken as not representative of what the object represents, its communicative value. Reinforcing this conventional understanding, the back of an opon ifa is empty, all explicit representations being on its front.
But emptiness has profound significance in opon ifa. The greatest amount of space in the front of the opon ifa is the empty centre. This emptiness is functional because it is the space where the divination instruments are cast by the diviner, and the symbolic significance of their spatial configurations, the patterns they assume, interpreted as the response of the oracle.
Around the empty centre may be carved a broad range of motifs. The possible or specific symbolic significance of these motifs is inadequately represented in the literature on opon ifa, although some have been identified. Modern opon ifa, however, those carved after the emergence of widespread literacy in what has become the global Ifa community, are more often carved with explicit attention to the symbolic possibilities of these encircling motifs.
The encircling motifs are variable, demonstrating great
variation between various opon ifa. The eyes at the centre top of the
structure, however, are a fixed component of all opon ifa. They represent
the perceptual capacity that empowers Ifa divination, at the intersection
of dimensions, of matter and spirit. This perception is understood as mediating between the self as mortal identity and as
immortal entity.
This perceptual capacity is represented by the deity Eshu, messenger between deities
and humans, ubiquitous yet uniquely present in the self as an aspect of
the distinctive character of personal identity, privileged embodiment
of the pervasive presence of àse, creative cosmic force
enabling perception and creative response as it is
uniquely expressible by each existent.
The variety of artistic strategies through which this fixed
motif is carved, two eyes, standing alone, or within a face, is one of the glories of opon ifa art.
Yet, at the centre of this
concourse of symbols, of varied visual motifs and their
evocative possibilities, is an empty centre. A space where the patterns of
meaning ultimately pointed to by those symbols are actualized. A womb space, it
may called, where new possibilities at the intersection of what is, what
was and what may be come to birth.
What do the patterns that appear on
the empty centre say about the nature of the query brought to the oracle? What
insight may they give to its genesis and to its possible future developments?
What suggestions are made as to how to navigate these possibilities?
Divination is one of humanity's oldest efforts to reach
beyond the limitations of the human mind. More recent approaches prefer to
provoke the mind's creative capacities to go beyond its limitations at a
particular point in time through such strategies as stimulating
intuition, creating maps of possibilities and assessing possible outcomes.
Whichever route one takes, the opon
ifa model remains evocative for symbols of insight and exploration.
The empty back of the opon ifa, therefore, may suggest the
hidden face of phenomena, concealed possibilities people seek to
penetrate, like the empty back of the opon resonates structurally with the
empty centre in front, acting as the point of stability, the resting point
of the more prominent front, evoking a foundation on which the obvious,
the readily perceptible rests, inviting penetration through that
visible form to its invisible core, the penetration from ojú lásán,
the conventional face of phenomena to ojú inú, the inward face, the
essence that is cognizable only through a movement from the eyes that see
the obvious to the eyes that see the unobvious but foundational.
Image source- Karlsson/Wickman
“The section on Ife in Ogundiran's book, though, rich and memorable, is rather limited.’’
“Not surprising. How does one perceive the glory of the sun from behind thick glasses?”
“The encrustations of time…”
“Exactly. Made more challenging by the fact that we never developed widespread writing and so never told our story in a direct manner, preferring the indirections of symbolic stories passed by word of mouth.”
“Not working with the Ibibio, Ejhagam and Igbo to develop their Nsibidi script was a mistake.”
“True. We were too committed to secrecy. So, we were not inspired by the idea of writing, something that is separate
from the bearer of knowledge and therefore outside his control.”
“Do you not recall why it was so? To us, the spoken word was everything. Incubated in the womb of the self, it came
forth empowered by the person’s essence, shaping reality according to will.”
Ogundiran on Yoruba Identity as Constituted through a Body of Ideas and Practices
What is meant by the term “Yorùbá” particularly in its emergence well before the modern period in which previous histories locate the recognition of a Yorùbá identity unifying various communities, from the Ijesa, to the Ijebu to the Ife?
Is this identity primarily linguistic, geographic, ethnic or political, religious or behavioral, one may ask.
Ogundiran, employing a combination of archeological and historical exploration, proceeds to the depths of this history in what he describes as the migration of various groups from the Niger-Benue region, tracing the development of an orientation to the world that unified various communities amongst these migrants, an orientation he describes as a “community of practice.’’
His goal, therefore, is to demonstrate the concept "Yorùbá" as referring to a body of ideas, of perspectives and of related behavior.
He seems to see language, ethnicity, politics, geography and even religion as a
subset of this overriding framework.
He dedicates his book to exploring how these signifiers of communal identity were developed as a demonstration of a particular community of practice.
He therefore takes forward such research orientations as Adeleke Adeeko’s The Arts of Being Yorùbá, centred in demonstrating the cultural signifiers that identify Yorùbá identity, irrespective of issues of genealogy or geography.
While Adeeko engages in a synchronic
analysis, describing the culture as it currently exists, Ogundiran’s interest
is in diachronic study, exploring how the culture was developed.
Ogundiran also pursues a completely integral history, dramatizing the development of the Yoruba community of practice at the intersection of ecology, politics, economics, philosophy and spirituality. He demonstrates the intertwining of these developments as social strategies developing in terms of a unified progression.
Aribidesi Usman and Toyin Falola's The Yoruba: From Prehistory to the Present, published in 2019, shortly before Ogundiran's book, reflects much of Yoruba studies in proceeding with a rich discussion of Yoruba political and economic history but accounting for Yoruba spirituality in providing an informative chapter on the subject without integrating it into the historical narrative as a growing and changing part of the developmental process the book describes in relation to politics and economics.
The historical development, the mutations undergone by Yoruba philosophy and spirituality before the post-classical era are therefore not accounted for, the picture of this cultural dimension being thereby frozen in time.
One of Ogundiran's boldest achievements is his efforts at demonstrating the historical dimension of Yoruba philosophy and spirituality in its integration within a socio-economic and political framework.
Ogundiran’s work is thus a continuation of the groundbreaking developments in the study of African history initiated by the Ibadan History School, telling African history with Africans at the centre as the primary agentive forces of that history.
It is also a contribution to African cultural studies, in examining the nature and development of an African culture.
His work aspires to advance these
dimensions of African Studies by combining history and cultural analysis,
demonstrating how the culture has developed in the period of the book’s focus,
developments that continue into changes ongoing in the present.
Image and Text: Opon Ifa Histories and the Opon Ifa of Babalawo Labosinde
A legend goes that the opon ifa of the great diviner Labosinde was lost at the final battle of the war of Osogbo in which the Ibadan and Oyo alliance, under the command of Balogun Oderinlo and the political leadership of Alaafin Oluyole decisively stopped the Fulani jihadist invasion of Yorubaland in 1840, ''the most consequential event in Yoruba history during the nineteenth century,'' Ogundiran states, saving ''the House of Odùduwà (Ilé-Ifè), the House of Sàngó (Òyó ), the House of
Obòkun (Ilésà), the House of Òràngún (Ìlá), the House of Obánta (Ìjèbú-Òde),
and others from becoming emirates"(385) as had happened at Ilorin through disunity in the Yoruba ranks, a Fulani hegemony sustained in Ilorin till today, from which outpost at that time the effort to subjugate all Yorubaland had been launched by the long arm of the jihad extending from the Hausa states to the forested interior.
The story goes that the ''foresight, audacity to act, and timely intervention'' demonstrated by
Alaafin Oluyole, which such a historian as Ogundiran was able to observe across the passage of centuries (385) enabling ''a turning point in Yoruba history,'' Ogundiran further elaborates, quoting Samuel Johnson, ''patriarch of Yoruba history,'' was not due to Alaafin Oluyole's vision alone, but also to the wisdom of his babalawo Laborinde.
Facing an ''existential crisis'' beyond anything that ''had ever confronted the Yoruba,'' as Ogundiran observes of the Fulani jihadist's ambition to ''dip the Koran in the sea,'' total subjugation of Yorubaland to the Sokoto Caliphate which had established itself in the Hausa states through conquest, the Yoruba were largely ''displaced and demoralised'' particularly after the jihadists, confronting the conflict riven Oyo-Abariba alliance, had broken the power of the Oyo empire in 1837, initiating ''the end of an era'' in Yoruba history, an event the abiding outcome of which Ogundiran unforgettably describes:
Òyó-Ilé and scores of other cities, towns, villages, kingdoms, and principalities in the northwest Yorùbá region have since lain in ruins. The alleys and avenues through which mounted men of chivalry once galloped and the old compounds of the elite and the underclass are now taken over by the thickets and thorns of woodland savanna and other wildlife who now call the place home. Today, the once colorful and boisterous Akèsán market is in utter silence, with the ageless boulders and some of the baobab trees being the only witnesses of the past transactions ( 383).
Facing a challenge of such monumental scope required not
only political resolution, military
strategy and courage but also spiritual
discernment and empowerment, and so, on the faithful night before the great final battle, the Alaafin's babalawo Labosinde called upon the cry ''Ikú yá j’ èsín,'' ''To die is better than living
in disgrace,'' proclaimed by Oluewu, Alaafin of Oyo-Ile after the Fulani
jihadists had struck with devastating force at his capital, a cry that led him
into determined battle against them and death at their hands at the Eledu War, as Ogundiran
sums up movingly ( 382-383).
Labosinde
called upon the cries of the thousands killed in that conflict, the countless
displaced, weaving these cries of pain and determination into an instrument of
power, an opon ifa, for guiding strategy and calling on Earth to bear witness to those
domiciled on her, seeking her help for them in their efforts to protect their habitat.
At the height of the battle, the story goes, the opon ifa exploded, a signal
that the power of the invading forces had been broken. Its pieces are described
as scattered on the battle field, buried in earth, and remain highly priced on account of the
potency they still contain.
The story of Labosinde and his opon ifa, though contextualized by the factual events narrated by Ogundiran, is constructed for the purpose of this essay in order to suggest the impression on me of opon ifa generally, as stimulated by the one directly above.
These artifacts embody histories, the histories of their creators, whose artistic personalities imbued them with their distinctive presence, the histories generated by the various contexts in which they were used, the aspirations invested in them and the hopes they mobilized and perhaps the spiritual identities they assumed through countless ritual acts of which they were the centre.
The better forms of opon ifa photography are able to illuminate such storied values of opon ifa through careful use of light and shade, highlighting qualities inherent to the sculptures but needing visual sensitivity to adequately appreciate, photographic skill evident in the examples in this essay, helping foreground the remarkable dexterities of the woodcarvers in their superb image making.
Image source- ''Divination Techniques'' by Eileen Moyer.
“True, we favoured speech over writing. But today, Akin labours in trenches below ground, seeking clues of our existence, material forms that tell our story, trying to reconstruct whole histories through the prism of colored beads, part of Ife’s symbolic wealth.’’
“True, but a lot of has already been written.”
“ Granted, but significantly speculative. Is Akin himself not often speculating, brilliant speculation, but speculation nonetheless?”
“The limitations of an oral tradition.”
“Setilu’s integration of the varied elements that became what is now known as Ifa is lost to history. His synthesizing genius recognized only by the dim echo of his name in such texts as Wande Abimbola’s reference to him as the creator of Ifa in An Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus, a reference unelaborated.”
Methodological and Perspectival Challenges of The Yoruba: A New History
The challenge of Ogundiran’s work
for me is that in spite of his determination to privilege Yorùbá self
understanding in his book, his methodology is fully derived from Western
centred scholarship.
Also, his accounts of Yorùbá spirituality and philosophy, powerful as they are, are informed by what may be described as a limited style of interpreting cognitive work within the Western scholarly tradition in which his scholarly formation was conducted.
The Western pedagogical and research system system is the one within which African Studies as an integrated discipline was developed. The Western tradition as it has emerged since perhaps the 19th century represents the first opening for Africans to develop widespread writing, communicate extensively with the world at large and develop cognitive and pedagogical protocols standardized across the continent in tandem with other centres of learning across the world.
I understand Ogundiran's approach to Yorùbá spirituality and philosophy, represented by Orisa cosmology and the institutions of Ifa and Ogboni, as defined by an excessively intellectualist and materialist focus.
The privileging of intellect is one approach to understanding and assessing human creativity, the most prominent approach in the Western academy. Like all approaches to assessing the significance of the multifaceted character of human cognitive possibility, it is a limited one, best appreciated in tandem with all the others.
This approach may be seen as particularly influential in the Anglo-American centres of learning that shaped Ogundiran's scholarship. It is an approach foregrounded by Western thought since the Enlightenment but which is riven by contradictions even within the works of Enlightenment thinkers and their precursors of the 17th century Scientific Revolution along with other contradictions coming to the fore in critiques generated by Postmodernism within Western scholarship.
In sum, Ogundiran does not address the spiritual dimension of Yorùbá thought, preferring to remain at the level of presenting it purely as an intellectual construct and in terms of narrative strategies within political schemes and economic developments.
He does not address the cosmology’s engagement with questions of the nature of being, of what constitutes existence, of the various dimensions of existence, its explorations of the meaning of existence beyond human construction but which humanity tries to understand.
He does not address these issues emerging at the heart of Yorùbá philosophy and spirituality as evident in Orisa cosmology and the institutions of Ifa and Ogboni, preferring to describe these purely as intellectual and imaginative constructs limited to the frameworks of social existence.
His images of these cultural forms is fixed in accounts of them as political strategies and evoking economic factors in Yorùbá history, a perspective which though relevant, dilutes the creative drive, the epistemic ambition, the metaphysical hunger and spiritual sensitivities this philosophical and spiritual culture represents.
I have discussed my justifications for these views in previous parts of these series, specifically, “Ifa Divination as a Historiographic Paradigm” and in the ensuing discussion, all accessible at that link and in "Fact and Speculation in Historical Narrative: Akinwumi Ogundiran’s The Yorùbá: A New History: Yorùbá History as a Quest for Meaning" ( Parts One, Two and Three).
Image and Text: Kolawole Ositola and the Quaternary Division of Opon Ifa
Babalawo Kola Ositola at Work on an Opon Ifa
Picture by John Pemberton III
in
“Between fate and free will, between being and becoming, between ori and ori, between the physical head and the head invisible, the Ifa adept mediates at the centre of the opon ifa, the crossroads empty but fecund, I would remind you, recalling that even with all our explorations into hidden realms, how much could we really see, astonishing though our knowledge could be?”
“ Because today is different from yesterday,
the babalawo divines every day,” it is said.
Using Ogundiran in Going Beyond Ogundiran
My interest now is to explore the possibility of conducting such a project as Ogundiran’s by building on his work in order to take its aspirations further.
I expect its possible, inspired by Ogundiran’s example, but going beyond it, to explore Yorùbá history using a methodology grounded in Yorùbá thought, under which may be subsumed the Western derived methodologies Ogundiran employs.
One of these is his use of hermeneutics, the study of the principles of interpretation of phenomena across disciplines. I expect Ogundiran's reference to the centrality of this discipline in his work is to the discipline as formed within the Western academy, proceeding from Biblical criticism in a line of influence stretching from Fredrich Schleiermacher to Martin Heidegger to Hans Georg Gadamer and beyond.
It may be seen as emerging from the study of Biblical texts in their construction of the meaning of human existence in the broadest contexts, within the framework of time and eternity, and, in the hands of such philosophers as Heidegger and Gadamer, expanding to the study of human cultural expression as dramatizations of human quest for meaning, as I am beginning to understand this discipline.
Other cultures, however, have also developed their own equivalents of hermeneutic strategies, as in the Yorùbá origin Ifa system of knowledge, specifically in its use as a divinatory method.
It should be possible to be guided
in historical study by Ifa hermeneutics, a form of dafa, the Ifa term
for the divinatory process. This approach would adapt the divinatory procedure in
exploring human progression and motives through the study of the complex
of factors that shape human being and becoming. These development may thus be
studied for their implications for the meaning, proximate,
intermediate and ultimate, of the human experience as a historical progression
with a metaphysical implication.
The Inspiration of Hegel
Correlating history and metaphysics brings us to the inspirational example of the German philosopher Georg Fredrich Hegel, a figure both positive and negative in relation to non-Western and particularly African cultures but whose example Ogundiran’s work may be said to relate to indirectly but very significantly.
Hegel is pivotal in relation to the kind of history Ogundiran has written. Hegel’s work may also suggest particular values that could enrich an initiative like Ogundiran’s.
Hegel’s Philosophy of History is lucid and instructive on ways of writing history, ideas still valid in spite of developments in histography, conceptions of the nature of history and how to study it.
Hegel’s focus is on relationships
between the narration of historical developments and the interpretation of
those events. Within the interpretive process, his focus is on what the
available information reveals about how people thought as they shaped their
lives in relation to their environments. Within that relationship between
thought and context, he explores the question of whether or not the development
of history demonstrates a goal towards which it moves.
Reflective History
Ogundiran is doing what Hegel refers
to in his Philosophy of History as “reflective history.” Reflective
history may be described as the study of the past through an orientation
derived from the explorer. Through this
orientation, they try to achieve a synthesis between their own orientation
and the possibilities integral to the material being studied, as I have
understood this idea so far.
Ogundiran's orientations derive from archeology, history and hermeneutics as
developed in the Western academy. He brings this orientation to bear on the
sources through which he reconstructs a history represented largely by
material forms and oral accounts, a good number of them more allusive than
direct, decoding the historical value of these information bearers in dialogue
with the textual tradition of Yorùbá history that opens up after the oral
tradition in which much of the history Ogundiran is studying is embedded.
In narrating the history he reconstructs, Ogundiran reflects on it. He tries to work out the immediate motivations and long range consequences represented by the actions of those he studies. He distills from these reflections a picture of the manner in which a number of communities coalesced around a body of ideas and practices about how to live.
I understand Ogundiran as stopping
at this point, from my reading of the book so far and as
Ogundiran seems to sum up in his preface and introduction.
Philosophical History
Hegel, however, would want to go
further. In the Hegelian spirit of enquiry, one could ask, "what may we
learn about human possibility generally, from this story told by
Ogundiran?"
"To what degree may it be instructive for human development generally,
keeping in mind the differences within similarities that define human being and
becoming in various contexts?"
"Is it possible to represent such understanding in terms
of an idea which could be added to the arsenal of ideas through which human
development may be viewed?"
" May such an idea bear some
similarities with Yorùbá thought, similarities that may resonate with
other ideas from other cultures?"
"All entities respond to
environment. Animals may be described as reflecting on their
experiences and adapting accordingly. Human reflection, however, is
more complex. These reflective capacities shape the scope of response to
situations. Does the reflections of Yorùbá people on their
experiences illuminate the experience of reflection? Do they throw light on the
nature of human consciousness that makes reflection possible? Do they perhaps state or suggest ideas about the ultimate orientation of
this consciousness?"
Such
questions relate to what Hegel describes as philosophical history. This involves exploring
questions of the deepest sources of human motivation in relation to enquiry
into the ultimate direction of existence, particularly human existence, as far
as this direction may be discerned, at various degrees of speculation or
certainty, of dimness or explicitness.
This presentation of Hegel's idea of
philosophical history modifies his formulation for my own needs. This
modification is shaped by my exposure to centuries of response to
such ambitions as Hegel's. These include Karl Popper's salutary critique, in The
Poverty of Historicism, of inadequately critical absolutism in efforts to
understand the dynamism of human existence in terms of predetermined
categories.
Conjunctions and Disjunctions
Between Hegel and Ogundiran
Hegel and Ogundiran share a
focus on ideas about the meaning of existence and how to live demonstrated by various peoples. Hegel, however, is more sensitive to the spiritual dimension of human thought, enabling him bring a more rounded body of ideas into play in analyzing his subject. Reflecting his immersion in his Christian faith and his academic training in theology, the thrust of his philosophy, particularly in relation to the philosophy of history and the nature of human drives in relation to human development within the cosmic scheme, are explicitly stated efforts to developing intellectual methods and systems from the framework of Christian faith and the constructions of Christian theology.
Whatever Ogundiran's faith is, he is writing centuries after Hegel, in an intellectual landscape very different from, though continuous with that of Hegel, though subsumed within the Western intellectual tradition. The explicit derivation of intellectual ideas and methods from religious postulates, as Hegel did, is likely to be seen as out of place in a philosophical or historical work in the contemporary context in which Ogundiran is working.
Hegel's example, however, remains deeply influential in the Western tradition, open to various adaptations that respond in different ways to the religious foundations of his thought, as in the materialist philosophy of Karl Marx, one of the most impactful in history, centred on material conditions as a primary determinant of human life.
The Hegelian example, though, may help sensitize the enquirer to human being's sensitivity to values relating to the meaning of existence, and even though they can be described intellectually and in relation to social contexts, cannot be subsumed by such frameworks.
The Relevance of Hegel's Philosophy of History and Phenomenology of Geist for a Historiography Inspired by Yoruba Thought
At the core of Hegel's exploration of the philosophical meaning of history and of the possibilities of human understanding in relation to cosmic development in a metaphysical sense, in terms of its underlying meaning at the level of value, is the concept of Geist, a term similar to the Yoruba ase.
The German word Geist, as used by Hegel, is described as meaning both ''mind'' and ''spirit'' in the sense of a divine, pervasive force and a pervasive intelligence actuating though not predeterming human affairs.
This is clearly a reworking of the Christian concept of the Holy Spirit, as explorations of the etymology of the word either suggest or demonstrate.
The beauty for Yoruba thought of Hegel's use of these ideas is that he demonstrates how an idea that is grounded, not in intellectual demonstration but on faith, can be reworked into an intellectual construct and used in developing analyses the logical significance of which do not depend on faith but purely on logic.
Hence, I am motivated by Hegel's example to explore such questions as the implications of Yoruba thought for understanding human creativity, its varied but correlative orientations, as driving history. The outcome of my reflections is represented by the opening sections of this essay, ''Yoruba History through the Lens of
Yoruba Thought'' and '' Ase
and Ori, Central Principles of Yoruba Thought.''
Sources
Yoruba Thought and Art
The best description of ase and its relationship to ideas of creativity known to me is the first chapter of Yoruba : Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought by Rowland Abiodun, John Pemberton and Henry John Drewal. The same book is superb on opon ifa iconography, its visual symbolism.
The account of the central coordinates of Yoruba thought in that chapter complement the different focus of Bolaji Idowu's Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief, comprehensive, yet lucid and poetic, the best book length summation of Orisa cosmology known to me. Its account of the idea of ori is a superb foundation for further investigations, as that by Segun Gbadegesin in African Philosophy and the many accounts of and examinations of the concept in philosophy, the visual arts and their interrelationship.
Hegel
Hegel is often presented as a complex thinker, which is not always accurate. His Philosophy of History is very clear, jargon free and simply requires patient attention.
His Phenomenology of Geist, at times translated as Phenomenology of Mind or Phenomenology of Spirit, which I am yet to read and which needs to be read in connection with the aspirations of this essay, could be more complex in its turns of thought and struggle to express complex ideas.
I get the impression, though, that its the fruits of a powerful mind at work, trying to make sense of the universe through employing intellectual tools derived from his religious faith, a faith he is eager to demonstrate as an insight evident in the logical progression of the universe.
His references to ancient Greek thought in the opening of the section of philosophical history in The Philosophy of History make clear the ultimate background of his aspirations in similar goals pursued by the ancient Greeks, exemplified, par excellence, by Plato.
Hegel's methods and aspirations may be seen as closer to that of Plato's student Aristotle, in terms of the efforts to employ reason in penetrating to the essence of existence, in its location in divine mind, as Jonathan Lear's excellent Aristotle: The Desire to Understand argues of Aristotle.
Conjunctions between these thinkers, if pursued, could help one significantly grasp the possibilities involved in these cognitive journeys within intersecting traditions.
Such correlative investigations could further sensitize one to the fellowship of what Paul, in the Biblical Letter to the Hebrews, describes as ''a great cloud of witnesses,'' participants in a great conversation, as a contemporary perspective puts these intertextual configurations.
Various translations of Hegel's texts are likely available free online along with texts upon texts of Hegel commentary, at various levels of accessibility.
In educating myself on these subjects, I combine general Internet search with reading books of various levels of sophistication, along with reading the primary texts, such as Hegel's works.
The most useful introductions I have had to the idea of Geist is the Wikipedia article on the subject and the relevant sections in Peter Singer's Hegel in the Oxford Past Masters series, now republished as Hegel: A Very Short Introduction.
A very good introduction to the philosophy of history is provided by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Wikipedia and the Stanford encyclopedia are always necessities for me in my explorations.
Thanks on Accessing Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yoruba : A New History
Great thanks to Indiana University Press for making an electronic copy of Ogundiran's book available for review purposes. Thanks to Ogundiran for letting me have a print copy of the book.
My Exploratory Journey with Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yoruba : A New History
Inspirational book description from Call For Papers from Yoruba Studies Review journal
General Summations
On Specific Themes
" 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"
"Ifa Divination as Historiographic Paradigm: Between the Sacred and the Secular, Politics and Spirit in Akin Ogundiran's The Yoruba: A New History on Yoruba History as a Quest for Meaning : Part 2 : Very Short Reflection" [ With a discussion at this link]
"Fact and Speculation in Historical
Narrative: Akinwumi Ogundiran’s The Yorùbá: A New History: Yorùbá History as a
Quest for Meaning" ( Parts One, Two and Three).
Close Reading
Donate to Compcros
From where this project comes.
Compcros is one of the world's largest, individually created, open access writing and scholarly projects.