Toyin Adepoju is a genius!
Toyin Falola
Great ones:
Your humble moderator now has to intervene! I think the direction in which the Ifa argument is going is making me uncomfortable, the inability to accept creativity, the failure to see the Esu in Adepoju---no path is straight, nothing should be concluded. Esu is the god that I have also adopted, and I did the longest book on this unique Yoruba god. All attempts to “kill” Esu (to use the concept of “kill” that Wariboko deploys), has failed.
I discovered Toyin Adepoju—Toyin Adepoju did not discover me! It was when I began to read him—the eclectic nature of his writings, his ability to turn the micro into the macro, his extraordinary talent to tap into the Nino and convert it into the mega, that I sought him out. I seek out people. It is a small contribution to the concept of the “informal” and “people” that Dr. Adeshina Afolayan of the University of Ibadan contributed to this forum that led to my knowing him. I contacted him and said we should meet at Ibadan. This is intellectual leadership. You must seek out people.
First, I thought Toyin Adepoju was a woman. As Adepoju began to talk about the vagina, I thought s/he was a lesbian. His writings can be clueless as to his identity. He can be irascible. And so what? The God of Israel was also temperamental. Blasphemy!
Thinking that he was she, an invitation was extended to him by our Art Dept to come and give a lecture. I wrote to them that I don’t think he was she! I did not know how that invitation ended. I reinvited him back to Austin to be part of the Nimi Wariboko conference, but that is another story.
I extended a book contract to him to write on Ifa, as I saw new edges and frontiers in what he was doing. He signed the contract, but he did not deliver. What a shame!
I sought to meet him in person. And we met in Lagos, then at Ibadan. I had lunch with him. He interviewed me. I took him to my pepper soup joint—alas! he does not eat animals.
I advised him to register for a Ph.D. I got him a supervisor. I assured that I would fully fund the Ph.D. I nominated myself as the External Examiner. I had a three-way conversation with his would-be supervisor whom I chose for him. He thanked me and said he is not interested.
We are dealing with a genius whose ways of thinking may be beyond our realms. He may be decades ahead of us in his thinking. In the early 80s, when my talents were unfolding, only one person in the entire University—Professor Olabisi Afolayan—was able to discover it! Only one person. A year after my Ph.D., he asked the University to promote me to a Senior Lecturer. Of course, they refused. But he was the only one who saw my talent.
Let us see Adepoju as a genius, cultivate him, promote him, and see where we all land. Where he wants to convert an opportunity into money, we must back off.
For all those who are quick to criticize others, Adepoju is not my friend. The day I told Adeshina that Nimi Wariboko is not my friend; he was in shock. Moses Ochonu is not my friend. I worship talents where I see them. Even if Nimi or Moses abuse me, it is of no effect. I am manifesting my personality to locate extraordinary talents. Should they abuse me, they are displaying their own character flaws.
In the words of the Zulu, “I have spoken!”
Continue with your debates.
Stay well.
TF
Ibukunolu A Babajide
AN ENGLISH NURSERY RHYME
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose
The law demands that we atone
When we take things that we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine
The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back
- Anonymous (circa 1764)
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
--
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Your humble moderator now has to intervene! I think the direction in which the Ifa argument is going is making me uncomfortable, the inability to accept creativity, the failure to see the Esu in Adepoju---no path is straight, nothing should be concluded. Esu is the god that I have also adopted, and I did the longest book on this unique Yoruba god. All attempts to “kill” Esu (to use the concept of “kill” that Wariboko deploys), has failed.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Adeshina Afolayan
Department of Philosophy
University of Ibadan
+23480-3928-8429
Nimi Wariboko
Dear Professor Falola:
You have spoken well. You have said publicly what you told me years ago. You once said me that: “Adepoju is a genius and he does not know it.” I came to know Adepoju through you; I think around 2011 when in a private email you brought the two of us together with others to debate an issue on death and afterlife. Like you, I see Adepoju as a highly talented scholar, an extraordinary thinker, a genius. In December 2018, I made efforts to meet with him in Lagos. I was visiting Nigeria from Boston and I had the option to land at Abuja or Port Harcourt, but because I wanted to meet with him I went through Lagos.
He is different in his approach to scholarship and I have never been afraid of people who do things differently. Like you, I have been encouraging him to systematically put his ideas in book forms and also to pursue a Ph.D. Actually he applied to Oxford and the University of London but they had problems locating an appropriate supervisor for him.
Almost every week I call him on the phone to encourage him in his work and to mutually share ideas with him. I send him books and essays.
Please permit me to give a personal testimony to drive home the point you have made. Sometimes, we need to do the extraordinary thing to allow people like Adepoju to realize their dreams. I am a beneficiary of such favors. I will not be where I am today if others did not discover me and nurtured my growth. So here is my testimony. I give it in the spirit that if I could do, then Adepoju will do. He is easily more gifted than me.
I was once like him—or still like him in many ways. I dabble into too many fields. The reason why I did my PhD in two years and came out with summa cum laude is that I had published five books and 18 articles before I even started my doctoral work at Princeton. Years before I started the doctoral program, NYU had invited me to teach as an adjunct lecturer without a doctoral degree. I was invited based on my eclectic publications. Yet after a year or so, I was evaluated and promoted to Assistant Professor of Social Sciences. Yes, in those days at NYU even adjuncts had to go through rigorous evaluations to be promoted. The reason why NYU gave me that special title of Assistant Professor of Social Sciences was to recognize and celebrate my eclectic scholarship. The scholars there did not disdain my work because it was all over the map. I taught a history and African studies related course at NYU. At the same time, I was also an adjunct professor at New York Institute of Finance where I taught two courses, mergers and acquisitions, and security analysis.
To come back to my doctoral degree: I completed it in two years. I started the doctoral program in September 2004, went through all the seminars and comprehensive examinations, and completed the dissertation in early August 2006. But I could not defend it immediately because the school was closed for the summer. I defended as soon as the classes resumed in fall 2006. (It takes on the average six years to complete a doctoral degree in America, even after your master degree. In theological studies it often takes more than six years because of language studies) After the defense I went back to pastoring a church full time in New York City for a year. I came back to the academy in July 2007, joining Andover Theological School, one of the oldest graduate institutions in North America. It was started by the Puritans, the same guys that started Harvard. I became a full professor in 2009 with an endowed chair when my doctoral classmates where still writing their dissertations.
When I was hired the Andover faculty saw my talents and started me as an associate professor with a chair. And the president of the school told me if I could produce enough work to meet the standards required for promotion I would be elevated to the rank of a full professor in two years. This was all written down and signed as a contract. He was not playing any game. By the grace of God, I did it after the usual rigorous external and internal evaluations. I became a full professor on May 9, 2009. (Aside: Andover merged with Yale University in 2016)
The year I was promoted to full professor I was elected the chair of Ethics Faculty Colloquium of the nine graduate institutions (including Harvard and Boston University) that then constituted the Boston Theological Institute. The senior colleagues in my academic field had enough confidence in my scholarship to ask me to lead them as the chair. I served in that position for three years.
Somebody like Adepoju can easily replicate what I have done. He could do his PhD in a similar record time. He could become a professor in also a record time. He far more talented than me. I thank God that American professors saw me and gave me a space to flourish. They broke all standing institutional rules to promote and celebrate me.
Professor Falola is right, let us give Adepoju a chance. He is unconventional, and let us nurture him. When he is wrong let us correct him in a scholarly and respectable way. This idea of shaming him or treating him as less than a scholar because he does not have a PhD or because he is not affiliated with a university does not help the great cause for the search for wisdom or truth. I did not have a PhD for a long time and I was accepted into my academic circles, invited to conferences. For a long time all I had was my first degree in economics (first class honors, University of Port Harcourt) obtained in 1984 and a 1992 MBA (finance and accounting, Columbia).
It was David Henige—a man I had never met—in 1997 that introduced me to Professor Falola and encouraged him to publish my essay on transaction cost economics, which I applied to explain African economic history. Henige read an essay I had written on economic history when I was an investment banker on Wall Street and he made sure it was published. That essay later brought me some fame. Henige wrote to me stating that I should send the paper to Falola, who was then editing the journal of African Economic History. Henige said his external reviewers rejected the paper because it was not “history” enough, but he thought they were wrong and shortsighted. But he could not publish it in his journal because of the rejection. I did not know the difference between history proper and economics/economic history then. I just dabbled into things that caught my fancy with only an MBA as a graduate degree. Henige did not shoot me down, he pointed me to an outlet that suited my work. I was still an ordinary “crass” investment banker when that essay was being taught to doctoral students in economic history and African history at the London School of Economics. My testimony here is that others gave me a chance to make mistakes and grow. Adepoju deserves the same favor.
I support Professor Falola in calling for a change in the way some of us on this platform discourage Adepoju’s eclectic scholarship. I regularly read what his critics say and I often call him to say they are right and he should learn from them instead of quarreling with them. Two days ago, he told me that he has learned a lot from Professor Agbetuyi, who is one of his fiercest critics on this platform. I have always encouraged him to pay serious attention to Agbetuyi’s objections because they would help him to grow as scholar. Agbetuyi has rendered an important service to Adepoju by holding his intellectual legs to the fire. I even told him that Professor Agbetuyi has a point about the need to be much more careful in using wisdoms from traditions other than his own. I said he should do his scholarship in ways that do not offend the owners of the traditions. My advice to Adepoju was that as a scholar he would need to pay attention to some community consensus on standards. He takes good advice. Adepoju is growing. His form of creativity is strange and fascinating. I wish him luck.
Professor Falola, thanks for this intervention.
Sincerely,
Nimi Wariboko
Boston University
Elias K. Bongmba
Thank you Professor Falola. This is an amazing story. I sent Adepoju an email a few weeks ago asking him if is writing a book on the themes he articulates in his posts. Now I know that I was some 20 years behind times. We have a lot to learn from him and I know this will come together in the near future. He is a gift.
As for you, your unconventional path has built carriers for many
people, opened doors, made the academic world richer with great
books and ideas, and expanded a daily interdisciplinary
conversation.The old saying remains true that a prophet does not
always have honor among his own people, but the honor lives on and
is shared with many others.
Elias
--
OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (toyin...@austin.utexas.edu)
Add cleanup rule |
More info Elias K. Bongmba
Dear Nimi,
This is an illuminating story. Thank you.
Elias
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Can you explain why you hold this view-
where you see a genius, I see an impostor and a charlatan who cuts corners and is unwilling to subject himself to the rigours of academics but wishes to bask in the undeserved limelight (by tagging on the coattails of hard thinkers and workers).
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CADKs6Wv6m9jtES77H87GQNuN4ez3%2BYkiwme9uy9nHjpQaKxxEQ%40mail.gmail.com.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
I object very strongly to the tone of the following, particularly the sections highlighted by me :
''... Adepoju’s eclectic scholarship. I regularly read what his critics say and I often call him to say they are right and he should learn from them instead of quarreling with them. Two days ago, he told me that he has learned a lot from Professor Agbetuyi, who is one of his fiercest critics on this platform. I have always encouraged him to pay serious attention to Agbetuyi’s objections because they would help him to grow as scholar. Agbetuyi has rendered an important service to Adepoju by holding his intellectual legs to the fire. I even told him that Professor Agbetuyi has a point about the need to be much more careful in using wisdoms from traditions other than his own. I said he should do his scholarship in ways that do not offend the owners of the traditions. My advice to Adepoju was that as a scholar he would need to pay attention to some community consensus on standards. He takes good advice. Adepoju is growing. His form of creativity is strange and fascinating. I wish him luck.''
I see Nimi as making assumptions he is not in a position to make. Those critics he references are not seen by me as being right, thus I cant be described by Nimi within his self constructed paradigm as a person who ''takes good advice'' an instructed person who ''is growing'' through being educated about how to do scholarship.
I am eager to learn but am not pleased about being described as learning through agreeing with people whom I actually see as needing to learn from me.
I am particularly puzzled about the description of me as quarrelling with anyone.
I have had repeatedly to educate Agbetuyi about rules of scholarly discourse and he seems to have refrained from persisting in his style on account of the registers of reference I invoked indicating he ought to know better.
I listened patiently to Nimi on the phone about ''I even told him that Professor Agbetuyi has a point about the need to be much more careful in using wisdoms from traditions other than his own''
but have not been able to work out yet how to explain to Nimi about the need to distinguish in this context between an insular nativism, a tradition bound conservatism, and genuine sensitivity to the intrinsic integrity of a culture.
Agbetuyi has been stuck in a non-progressive ethnocentrism within which Yoruba spiritualities are approached as fixed icons modification of which is sacrilege.
Spiritualities do not grow that way.
I gain from Agbetuyi from the stimulus I get from responding to his challenges, a process I am happy to continue as long as he operates in terms of mutually respectful discourse.
I admire Nimi's academic record and he has been helpful in acting as a referee on my PhD and fellowship applications.
Along these lines, he has mentioned ''My advice to Adepoju was that as a scholar he would need to pay attention to some community consensus on standards.''
I have concluded, however, that I am happy as an Independent Scholar using what formal training I have got so far.
Along those lines, I urge all my friends and admirers of my work to consider donating to my initiative as an Independent Scholar.
Great thanks, brethren.
toyin
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DAEA704C-7CF6-4FD4-BB34-047A401A3141%40msn.com.
olugbenga Ojo
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Your responses are always welcome, as I keep explaining to you.
But please conduct yourself in ways expected of a scholar who focus on the issues along, focusing on logic not personalization or denigrations.
Avoid styles of response you now have to spend time justifying. Just focus.
I anticipate your responses in this clean manner.
thanks
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Great thanks for your support.
Adepoju is an Independent Scholar.
He needs both verbal and financial support
Here is the link to provide such support-
Donate at Compcros
Oga Falola has even mentioned such a glorious vision as
''I assured that I would fully fund the Ph.D. I nominated myself as the External Examiner'''
which I missed in our discussions across various platforms but which I am pleased to be better educated about now.
Great thanks for all your efforts, sir, but is it not more realistic to support what a person insists on doing rather than insisting on supporting what one would like them to do, particularly since what they insist on doing yields significant fruit and gives them fulfillment?
Babcock PhD fees are 600,000 naira a session. Add other expanses and the total would approach or reach a million a year, particularly if fieldwork is involved. Such monies would be very good for my Independent Scholarship.
Great thanks to Professor Akinwumi Ogundiran for his verbal and financial support of my work.
thanks
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Gloria Emeagwali
On Dec 2, 2020, at 09:41, Elias K. Bongmba <bon...@rice.edu> wrote:
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Great thanks.
Much to chew upon.
I described myself as a genius when people on this group described me as fraudulent for purporting to teach a paradigm for developing oneself as a genius through studying the work and career of Toyin Falola.
How can a person who is not a genius claim to teach how to become one, it was asserted.
That is 419, it was stated.
I explained that learning from geniuses involves trying to understand and emulate them, a continuous journey.
It was still insisted that my vision was fraudulent since I did not yet embody what I wanted to teach.
At that point, I declared myself a genius and asked those detractors to try to prove otherwise with reference to my work.
They kept their peace.
On the Adepoju/Falola Paradigm, with all due respect, you might need to look at it again.
I am asking people to pay the little sum of $5 in order to learn about a paradigm of genius I have distilled from the work of Toyin Falola.
Is there anything strange about people paying for creative work ?
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/1844518421.2279381.1606918598587%40mail.yahoo.com.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Nimi Wariboko
Dear Adepoju:
Thank you for your careful response to my intervention this morning. You have raised objections to my use of certain words. I take it to mean that you are offended by them. I offer my sincere apologies. But I owe it to the members of this platform to clarify my use of the “offending words.” I am also hoping that after reading my submission, you might change your earlier opinion about my response to Professor Falola’s defense of your scholarship. Mine was offered in the same spirit as his.
Quarrel:
I should have put “quarrel” in quote. By “quarrel” I do not mean to be offensive. I refer to academic debates as “fights” or “quarrels.” Pardon or forgive my error in judgement in applying this word to describe your debates with your interlocutors. When I said your critics are right, I qualified it with “often.” I take the approach that everyone correcting me is “right.” It is left for me to do what I want to do with their opinions. My thinking is that the best compliment anyone can pay to me in the academy is to take the time to read me and “quarrel” with me. Quarreling with me is a right disposition in and of itself. I like to have fun. Also I hardly respond to my critics. I spend the time to learn from their criticisms. If my memory serves, me right I have never responded to a critic since my first book came out in 1993.
Not offending traditions:
I mentioned this in one of our previous private discussions because as a Christian theologian or philosophers I have seen people in other traditions push back when Christian theologians go into their fields or traditions. There is a whole protocol emerging on how best to do comparative studies or to appropriate traditions that are not the writer’s own.
Good advice:
Three things here: First, the “good advice” does not refer to your critics. But from me; I am referring to you listening to me and considering my opinion. Second, my brother, I said “good” advice. Of course, no one should be cajoled to take bad advice. You have the right to categorize the advices coming from your critics. I expect that you take the good ones and throw out the bad ones. Third, a good advice even if it is not coming from me, your friend, should be taken. Now we can debate what makes an advice good. But once we settle that is it is good, it should be rationally taken as good for decision making. I was careful not to define “good” for you. That would be presumptuous on my part.
Growing:
I did not use “growing” to mean that you are being educated about how to do scholarship. In all humility, I tell people I am still growing. Every scholar is still growing. I ask my graduate students: What will you be when you grow up? When I was consulting on Wall Street, our firm used to ask the CEOs of the top 20 investments banks in the world, “What will your firm be when it grows up?” Growth for me is a matter of casting a vision for a flourishing time ahead. It is a matter of actualizing one’s potentiality. Every existent being is on the course of actualizing his or her potentiality, all things being equal. Only God is a pure actuality, actus purus. In process theology/philosophy, it is even argued that God is still growing, still becoming. For me, growing connotes becoming. It is not a bad word in my lexicon.
If you have read me charitably you would found out that the word, growing.” was not meant to cast any aspersion on your scholarship. My whole intervention was to defend your type of scholarship. If you are offended, Sir, I take the word back. I am sorry.
Community Consensus Standards
They are always there, implicit or explicit. But we do not make a fetish out of them. They can be destabilized by individuals. And I have no problem with you or any person decentering, de-stablishing, or deconstructing a paradigm or standard of excellence. I do not particularly follow rules. But rules are there all the time.
Let me end with a story my late professor Max Stackhouse told me. Stackhouse was a student of Paul Tillich at Harvard in the early 1960s. One day, in doctoral seminar, a student asked the great Tillich: “Why do we need to read the masters?” Tillich replied: “You master the masters and after you have mastered them you throw them out of the window.” This implies that the one who is throwing out the masters would establish his or her own standards that would become the community’s standards for the next generation of students and thinkers. Of course, this will be overthrown.
I was not advocating that you make a fetish out of established standards of academic scholarship.
Conclusion
Adepoju, my friend, you know I do not intervene much in debates on this platform. I think you misunderstood my response to TF’s intervention. I am sorry if you are offended by my words. I am not the type that insults anyone.
Blessings be upon you, my dear friend. Thanks.
Nimi Wariboko
Boston University
From: <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Reply-To: "usaafric...@googlegroups.com" <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday, December 2, 2020 at 11:38 AM
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Toyin Adepoju is a genius!
I need to respond carefully to this fine but for me deeply disturbing piece from Nimi.
I object very strongly to the tone of the following, particularly the sections highlighted by me :
''... Adepoju’s eclectic scholarship. I regularly read what his critics say and I often call him to say they
are right and he should learn from them instead of quarreling with them. Two days ago, he told me that he has learned a lot from Professor Agbetuyi, who is one of his fiercest critics on this platform. I have always encouraged him to pay serious attention
to Agbetuyi’s objections because they would help him to grow as scholar. Agbetuyi has rendered an important service to Adepoju by holding his intellectual legs to the fire. I even told him that Professor Agbetuyi has a point about the need to be much more
careful in using wisdoms from traditions other than his own. I said he should do his scholarship in ways that do not offend the owners of the traditions. My advice to Adepoju was that as a scholar he would need to pay attention to some community consensus
on standards. He takes good advice. Adepoju is growing. His form of creativity is strange and fascinating. I wish him luck.''
Quarrel:
I should have put “quarrel” in quote. By quarreling I do not mean to be offensive. I refer to academic debates as “fights” or “quarrels.” Pardon or forgive my errors. When I said they are right, I qualified it with “often.” I take the approach that everyone correcting is right. It is left for me to do what I want to do with their opinions. My thinking that the best compliment anyone can pay to you in the academy is to take the time to read you and “quarrel” with me. That is a right disposition in and of itself.
Not offending tradition:
I mentioned this in our previous discussions because as a Christian theologian or philosophers I have seen people in other traditions push back when Christian theologians go into their fields or traditions. There is a whole protocol emerging on how best to do comparative studies or appropriating traditions that are not the writer’s own.
Good advice:
Third things here: First, the “good advice” does not refer to your critics. But from me; I am referring to you listening to me and considering my opinion. Third, my brother, I said “good” advice. Of course, no one should be cajoled to take bad advice. You have the right to categorize the advices coming from your critics. I expect that you take the good ones and throw out the bad ones.
Growing:
I did not use growing to mean that you being educated about how to do scholarship. In all humility, I tell people I am still growing. Every scholar is still. I ask my graduate students: What will you be when you grow up? When I was consulting on Wall Street, our firm used to ask the CEOs of the top 20 investments banks in the world, “What will your firm be when it grows up?” Growth for me is a matter of casting a vision for a flourishing time ahead. If you have read me charitably you would found out that it word was not meant to cast any aspersion on your scholarship. My whole intervention was to defend type of scholarship. If you are offended, Sir, I take the word back. I am sorry.
Community Consensus Standards
These are always there, implicit or explicit. But we do not make a fetish out of them. They can be destabilize by individuals. And I have no problem with you or any person decentering, de-stablishing, or deconstructing a paradigm or standards of excellence. I do not particularly follow rules. Rules are there all the time. Let end with a story my late professor, who was a student of Paul Tillich at Harvard, told me. One day, in doctoral seminar in the 1960s, a student asked the famous thinker, why do they as students need to read the masters. Tillich replied: “You master the masters first and after you have mastered then you throw them out of the window.” This implies that the one who is throwing out the masters would establish his or her own standards, which will become the community’s standards for the next generation of students and thinkers. Of course, this will be overthrown.
Conclusion
Adeopju, my friend, you know I do not intervene much in debates on this forum. I think you misunderstood my response to TF’s intervention. I am sorry if you are offended by words. I am not the type that insults anyone. Blessings be upon you. Thanks.
Nimi Wariboko
Boston University
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Michael Afolayan
Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
I will have to save this for careful chewing, so I can distill its wealth-
'' Growth for me is a matter of casting a vision for a flourishing time ahead. It is a matter of actualizing one’s potentiality. Every existent being is on the course of actualizing his or her potentiality, all things being equal. Only God is a pure actuality, actus purus. In process theology/philosophy, it is even argued that God is still growing, still becoming. For me, growing connotes becoming. ''
Your explanation is beautiful.
Perhaps the issue here is one of context.
Its not difficult to interpret in a conventional sense your own individualistic use of ''quarrel'' or unqualified use of ''growth'' in a situation in which the critic involved is problematic in their stance.
Thanks for your explanation.
toyin
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Your perspective on fundraising is not in alignment with historical realities.
Harvard, Cambridge and other rich universities not only do fundraising, but have offices devoted to fundraising.
Adepoju has generated and is expanding a large database of self created, high quality scholarly texts across a broad range of disciplines created at his own expense, therefore his fundraising efforts are justified.
Outside academia, Wikipedia is one of the world's greatest scholarly platforms and the founder of Wikipedia does a yearly fundraising drive to support an enterprise that is providing free information to the public.
In what way is the Wikipedia initiative different from that of Adepoju who provides a large database of high quality self created scholarship free of charge to the public?
Beyond such large institutional contexts, several mechanisms, such as Go Funds Me exist for people to raise funds from the public for various projects.
So, I'm puzzled at your summation that ''Soliciting for fund from fellow scholars for independent scholarship brings the respectable calling of scholarship to beggarly ridicule and most scholars would not support it.''
I wonder how you came to the following conclusion since I dont recall discussing such with you- - The fact no supervisor will support your scholarship so far means they cannot justify the expenditure involved to their colleagues based on normal expectations.''
I am doing what I like as a scholar and I am growing thereby.
I an Independent Scholar, not an academic.
I am happy to engage anyone who engages me and will advise anyone who does not operate according to scholarly standards of engagement how best to go about it, as I have consistently done with you and as I see you have begun to abide by.
thanks
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Toyin Falola
Alagba:
- Human beings have been doing self-naming since the beginning of civilization. One can call himself any name without anyone’s permission.
- Human beings create titles for themselves for a variety of reasons: King Sunny Ade, Commander Ebenezer Obey, General Kollington Ayinla
- Human beings give themselves titles: Sir, Otunba, Agba Akin, etc.
- Human beings have a conception of self. I actually see myself as a mediocre, and I have told anyone who comes my way that I am not bright. I see myself as someone whose knowledge capacity is so small and limited. Mr. Toyin Adepoju sees himself as a genius. I cannot question him.
I have to refer you to the Book of Galatians 6:3 “If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves.”
Karl Marx — 'I am nothing but I must be everything.'
TF
From:
'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday, December 2, 2020 at 4:27 PM
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Toyin Adepoju is a genius!
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/302993570.2381995.1606938891318%40mail.yahoo.com.
Harrow, Kenneth
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Toyin Adepoju is a genius!
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Those commenting forget or are not mentioning that that arose over Adepoju's efforts to teach a course on how to learn from the genius of Toyin Falola.
A simple- 'Let Us study the Genius of Toyin Falola'' has now been devolved to ''Adepoju calls himself a genius''.
''Pay $5 for a seminar on the genius of Toyin Falola'' has now been translated into ''Adepoju should get a real job instead of looking for $5.''
How will a community develop its knowledge capital maximally with such attitudes?
Some think we are still in the world where scholarly knowledge is developed almost wholly from academic journals, books , seminars and conferences.
Africans need freedom from their self created limitations.
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Thanks Michael Afolayan.
I
have been an academic before.
I have been a publisher.
I have been a taxi driver.
So I am well grounded in my resolve to be an
Independent Scholar.
I have been creative for more than 10 years outside being employed by anyone and I'm working more creatively on that.
I shall soon commence consistent publishing of my own books and those of others.
Your
patronage will be appreciated.
Not all scholars necessarily thrive in academia.
I am inspired by the interactive context of social media. I also get customers for my writings and services from social media.
I admire and use academic journals but am not motivated to submit to them.
Everyone should know what they have the orientation for.
I
am best at self education. My creativity stems from there.
I have undergraduate and graduate exposure from different universities in the world, along with extensive self education, so I should know what suits me best in terms of learning process and systems.
I
called myself a genius because some people on this group insisted I was a
fraud for not being a genius and yet claiming to be able to guide people on
learning from the genius of Toyin Falola.
You wrote this-
''Toyin should please get a real job and earn real money and not depend on online elicitation of $5 registration fees'''
In response two Toyin Adepoju's efforts to promote that Falola you claim to respect.
$5 for a seminar on Falola...or do you think learning has to be in academic contexts to be scholarly?
You are so sure about your knowledge of the fixed nature of Ifa.
I hope you will respond to my call to defend your views.
The fact that Adepoju does not have a PhD
Does not have what you call a real job
Does not publish in academic journals
All those ancillary issues in scholarship
Should not prevent you from justifying your views.
The ultimate verdict of the world of learning, in the construction of knowledge across history, in the shaping of fields of thought, gives little or no consideration to those ancillary issues you raised about Adepoju's professional identity.
What matters is your contribution to knowledge.
Please share yours on the debate on Ifa.
Thanks
Toyin
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Akin Ogundiran
Now that Brother Toyin Adepoju has exposed my very token and private financial contribution to his scholarly pursuit (the kind of money we spend at the pepper soup joint), I will make these brief remarks. I don't always agree with Adepoju's style and substance of scholarship, but I admire his tenacity. I have painfully restricted myself from criticizing him publicly or privately, except one time on this forum. I think I have sent him two emails over the past ten years encouraging his comparative approach/interest in the study of epistemologies. I will do something different today. I will be his admiring critic.
Unlike Olóyè Falola, I will not call Adepoju a genius. He is also not Èṣù (in my opinion). Calling him a genius goes too far and will not help Adepoju. In fact, Adepoju frequently crosses into the unserious/charlatan zone because he willfully misuses information derived from rigorous research and heritage of African epistemologies, especially of the Yoruba. How can an African scholar, who claims to be working on African epistemology concludes, for example, that he is creating a new school of Ogboni without knowing the practical philosophy of the Ogboni and he is not a member of Ogboni? That claim makes him look unserious and disrespectful of an institution that has been changing, adapting (and still adapting), and fragmented for more than a thousand years.
Adepoju wants to be brilliant and wants to be recognized for it, but he often violates the basic rules of humanistic and social science engagements. He is certainly well-read, more than some professors, but this does make him a professor. He knows a little of many things and wants to convert that into expertise. Brilliance does not work that way. Brilliance requires originality, depth, not superficial hodgepodge. Superficiality may work in popular culture and other areas, but not in Yoruba Studies that has a history of rigorous scholarship, massive field ethnography, theoretical reflections in philosophy and art, historical research, etc. Yes, maybe everyone else got it wrong, and Adepoju has now discovered the holy grail. But he is not the beginning of African or Yoruba intellectual tradition. He must submit the process of his discovery to scrutiny for him to be taken seriously. He must explain the research or theoretical framework that leads to his discovery?
Adepoju seeks knowledge and wants to disseminate knowledge. He should also seek understanding that comes with patience, attentiveness, focus, and self-reflection. If not, as a Yoruba proverb says, "the stranger is blind; he can only see with the tip of his nose." Why should Adepoju be a perpetual, non-committed stranger in the epistemological community that means so much to him? He does not need a Ph.D. to be a great scholar, but he needs to master certain disciplines to be effective in comparative cultural studies. He needs to learn how to read cultural texts rather than just making things up. Sometimes, his efforts to rework other people's ideas show glimmers of brilliance, but he is not consistent. He digresses and does not stay focused. 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 and sanity (though they can't stop him). If that is nativism, as Adepoju alleges, what is he doing with that nativist tradition with history and living cultures? Why should he offend others? Is he not practicing Adepoju-centered nativism? Let me emphasize that Adepoju is free to write anything about Ifa. That does not make him a genius. However, others have the right to question the substance, purpose, and rigor of his writings in as much as he put it out there as the work of a genius.
The other day, Adepoju wrote of a purported archaeological discovery on USA-Africa Dialogue that shows the city of Ile-Ife existed as early as 300 BC. I deleted the garbage from my email. A day later, he claimed that it is fiction. Unfortunately, some people will run with the original posting because that's what they want to believe. He should have included at the end of his original fictional writing that this is a work of Adepoju's imagination. I hope the posting will be amended or deleted from USA-Africa Dialogue. It belittles the platform and the sender. African Studies cannot move forward when the boundary between fact and fiction no longer exists, especially on a scholarly forum like this.
The access to social media and listserves is certainly powerful, and Adepoju and others are using that access very well to promote their thoughts. However, the fact that paper is cheap, and some publishers will publish anything does not mean one should write a book. The same thing applies to writing blurbs or blogs. What is written on a page should worth more than the paper it is printed on. Otherwise, it's all for nothing, which can lead to something dangerous. I encourage Adepoju to consider that there is responsibility in scholarship. Are you here to inform or mislead? My brother, if you choose the former, please live up to it.
Akin Ogundiran
UNC Charlotte
OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (Dear Professor Falola:
You have spoken well. You have said publicly what you told me years ago. You once said me that: “Adepoju is a genius and he does not know it.” I came to know Adepoju through you; I think around 2011 when in a private email you brought the two of us together with others to debate an issue on death and afterlife. Like you, I see Adepoju as a highly talented scholar, an extraordinary thinker, a genius. In December 2018, I made efforts to meet with him in Lagos. I was visiting Nigeria from Boston and I had the option to land at Abuja or Port Harcourt, but because I wanted to meet with him I went through Lagos.
He is different in his approach to scholarship and I have never been afraid of people who do things differently. Like you, I have been encouraging him to systematically put his ideas in book forms and also to pursue a Ph.D. Actually he applied to Oxford and the University of London but they had problems locating an appropriate supervisor for him.
Almost every week I call him on the phone to encourage him in his work and to mutually share ideas with him. I send him books and essays.
Please permit me to give a personal testimony to drive home the point you have made. Sometimes, we need to do the extraordinary thing to allow people like Adepoju to realize their dreams. I am a beneficiary of such favors. I will not be where I am today if others did not discover me and nurtured my growth. So here is my testimony. I give it in the spirit that if I could do, then Adepoju will do. He is easily more gifted than me.
I was once like him—or still like him in many ways. I dabble into too many fields. The reason why I did my PhD in two years and came out with summa cum laude is that I had published five books and 18 articles before I even started my doctoral work at Princeton. Years before I started the doctoral program, NYU had invited me to teach as an adjunct lecturer without a doctoral degree. I was invited based on my eclectic publications. Yet after a year or so, I was evaluated and promoted to Assistant Professor of Social Sciences. Yes, in those days at NYU even adjuncts had to go through rigorous evaluations to be promoted. The reason why NYU gave me that special title of Assistant Professor of Social Sciences was to recognize and celebrate my eclectic scholarship. The scholars there did not disdain my work because it was all over the map. I taught a history and African studies related course at NYU. At the same time, I was also an adjunct professor at New York Institute of Finance where I taught two courses, mergers and acquisitions, and security analysis.
To come back to my doctoral degree: I completed it in two years. I started the doctoral program in September 2004, went through all the seminars and comprehensive examinations, and completed the dissertation in early August 2006. But I could not defend it immediately because the school was closed for the summer. I defended as soon as the classes resumed in fall 2006. (It takes on the average six years to complete a doctoral degree in America, even after your master degree. In theological studies it often takes more than six years because of language studies) After the defense I went back to pastoring a church full time in New York City for a year. I came back to the academy in July 2007, joining Andover Theological School, one of the oldest graduate institutions in North America. It was started by the Puritans, the same guys that started Harvard. I became a full professor in 2009 with an endowed chair when my doctoral classmates where still writing their dissertations.
When I was hired the Andover faculty saw my talents and started me as an associate professor with a chair. And the president of the school told me if I could produce enough work to meet the standards required for promotion I would be elevated to the rank of a full professor in two years. This was all written down and signed as a contract. He was not playing any game. By the grace of God, I did it after the usual rigorous external and internal evaluations. I became a full professor on May 9, 2009. (Aside: Andover merged with Yale University in 2016)
The year I was promoted to full professor I was elected the chair of Ethics Faculty Colloquium of the nine graduate institutions (including Harvard and Boston University) that then constituted the Boston Theological Institute. The senior colleagues in my academic field had enough confidence in my scholarship to ask me to lead them as the chair. I served in that position for three years.
Somebody like Adepoju can easily replicate what I have done. He could do his PhD in a similar record time. He could become a professor in also a record time. He far more talented than me. I thank God that American professors saw me and gave me a space to flourish. They broke all standing institutional rules to promote and celebrate me.
Professor Falola is right, let us give Adepoju a chance. He is unconventional, and let us nurture him. When he is wrong let us correct him in a scholarly and respectable way. This idea of shaming him or treating him as less than a scholar because he does not have a PhD or because he is not affiliated with a university does not help the great cause for the search for wisdom or truth. I did not have a PhD for a long time and I was accepted into my academic circles, invited to conferences. For a long time all I had was my first degree in economics (first class honors, University of Port Harcourt) obtained in 1984 and a 1992 MBA (finance and accounting, Columbia).
It was David Henige—a man I had never met—in 1997 that introduced me to Professor Falola and encouraged him to publish my essay on transaction cost economics, which I applied to explain African economic history. Henige read an essay I had written on economic history when I was an investment banker on Wall Street and he made sure it was published. That essay later brought me some fame. Henige wrote to me stating that I should send the paper to Falola, who was then editing the journal of African Economic History. Henige said his external reviewers rejected the paper because it was not “history” enough, but he thought they were wrong and shortsighted. But he could not publish it in his journal because of the rejection. I did not know the difference between history proper and economics/economic history then. I just dabbled into things that caught my fancy with only an MBA as a graduate degree. Henige did not shoot me down, he pointed me to an outlet that suited my work. I was still an ordinary “crass” investment banker when that essay was being taught to doctoral students in economic history and African history at the London School of Economics. My testimony here is that others gave me a chance to make mistakes and grow. Adepoju deserves the same favor.
I support Professor Falola in calling for a change in the way some of us on this platform discourage Adepoju’s eclectic scholarship. I regularly read what his critics say and I often call him to say they are right and he should learn from them instead of quarreling with them. Two days ago, he told me that he has learned a lot from Professor Agbetuyi, who is one of his fiercest critics on this platform. I have always encouraged him to pay serious attention to Agbetuyi’s objections because they would help him to grow as scholar. Agbetuyi has rendered an important service to Adepoju by holding his intellectual legs to the fire. I even told him that Professor Agbetuyi has a point about the need to be much more careful in using wisdoms from traditions other than his own. I said he should do his scholarship in ways that do not offend the owners of the traditions. My advice to Adepoju was that as a scholar he would need to pay attention to some community consensus on standards. He takes good advice. Adepoju is growing. His form of creativity is strange and fascinating. I wish him luck.
Professor Falola, thanks for this intervention.
Sincerely,
Nimi Wariboko
Boston University
From: <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>
Reply-To: "usaafric...@googlegroups.com" <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday, December 2, 2020 at 6:51 AM
To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
At times, one encounters certain things that must be accepted as aspects of unalterable reality, things that will not change in spite of one's efforts and cannot be wished away in an imaginary reversal of time.
The best one can do is try to engage with those realities, understand them and perhaps influence them, but dismissing them is a waste of time.
We now have traditional or classical
Ogboni, composed of Aborigine, Osugbo and later developments such as the
Reformed Ogboni Fraternity and non-traditional and post-classical Ogboni,
represented by the Universal Ogboni Philosophy and Spirituality created by
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, a system of ideas and practices, of thought and
action, grounded in particular epistemologies and metaphysics, and integrating
other central Yoruba institutions and ideas Ifa, Gelede/ Iyami/Aje through the
matrix of the forest/tree/bird cosmos symbolism of Osanyin, deity of the spiritual
and biological power of plants.
The linked series of texts ''Developing Universal Ogboni Philosophy and Spirituality : My Journey'' and the blog Opa Osanyin Philosophy, Mysticism and Magic demonstrate these aspirations.
Another such initiative of Adepoju's is his Independent Ifa Spirituality and Philosophy, grounded on perhaps the most comprehensive discussion of Ifa by Ifa scholars, covering the visual and verbal arts, philosophy and spirituality and directed at developing a self initiating do-it-yourself Ifa practice.
Akinwumi Ogundiran, the writer of a book arguing that the concept ''Yoruba'' is best understood, not as an ethnic identification, but as a matrix of ideas and practices developed by various peoples as they migrated from an original location,presents, in the post below this one, what he sees as a critical statement on Adepoju's efforts to put into practice an approach related to the idea his book espouses, Adepoju's adapting and reworking Yoruba thought and culture as dynamic systems rather than as bound to the configurations of their originating contexts.
Let us adapt Ogundiran's thesis as a framework for analyzing his claims about Adepoju's work:
Ogundiran's statements are in italics and quotation marks.
''How can an African scholar, who claims to be
working on African epistemology concludes, for example, that he is creating a
new school of Ogboni without knowing the practical philosophy of the Ogboni and
he is not a member of Ogboni?''
Why do you think that Adepoju's writings do not demonstrate knowledge of the practical philosophy of Ogboni?
Why do you think you need to be a member of Ogboni to be able to make a substantive contribution to Ogboni Studies, talk less construct a new form of Ogboni, if that is the direction your response is going?
''There
is literature in Ifa. We all know this. However, to declare on this forum that
Ifa is just literature is mindboggling.'' '
Why, with reference to Adepoju's writings on Ifa, do you
think Adepoju holds this view?
You may reference his essay on Ifa/Odu in the Oxford
Encyclopedia of African Thought, 2011 (readable through the ''look inside'' feature on its Amazon page) as well as his online essay, "Cosmological Permutations : Joseph Ohomina's Ifa Philosophy and the Quest for the Unity of Being. "
Why do you hold this view-
''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.''
What is the process of composing Ifa texts and how does it invalidates Adepoju's efforts?
What factors determine if a composition should be known as ese ifa?
In examining this subject, one needs to distinguish between Adepoju's wholly new ese ifa, inspired by classical models but with content not adapted from existing ese ifa, and hybrid ese ifa in which he expands existing ese ifa.
The completely new ese ifa are better compared with Biblical texts generally,
in relation to someone claiming to create completely new Biblical texts.
One may see an example of a such completely new Adepoju ese ifa ''Creating Ese Ifa using Classical Models: Esu and the Problem of how to be Everywhere at Once.''
How would such an issue relate to the manner-as far as is known-in which Biblical texts were composed as well as the manner in which they were selected and fixed in an unalterable canon, keeping in mind that different selections of Biblical texts exist, as I understand?
If ese ifa a closed corpus like the Bible?
You, or perhaps other scholar, have argued for the inadequacy of the word ''corpus'' in relation to African oral texts, on account of their constant expansion, as different from the fixed character associated with a corpus, of which the Bible is a strategic example.
How would such views of the fluidity and dynamism of African oral texts relate
to this question?
The Songs of Solomon example relates to Adepoju's expansions of hybrid ese ifa, expanding existing ese ifa.
An example is his ''Iya Agba'' series, a publication of
an original ese ifa, with a commentary - ''Classical Ese Ifa: Igbadu : Odu,the Venerable Old Womanbecomes the Calabash; Orisa Cosmological Narrative with Extensive Commentary''
and the construction of an expanded version based on that original-
Creating Hybrid Ese ifa UsingClassical Models: Igbadu: Odu,the Venerable Old Woman, becomes a Calabash
These are extensive texts, as befitting a pivotal ese ifa at the nexus of the strategic Yoruba institutions central to the cosmological conception of the feminine, Ifa, Ogboni, Iyami/Aje/Gelede.
This other example of hybrid ese ifa by myself is easier to read quickly
Themes in Ese Ifa, Ifa Literature : Courting Women 2 : The Exquisite Woman at Iwo
How should such efforts be seen and why, in the light of the question of varying modes of acceptance of canonical texts by spiritual/religious/knowledge communities and questions of the ontology of the sacred text between human construction and spiritual inspiration, as it is often held of these textual identities?
What factors determine if a composition should be known as ese ifa?
Will you respond carefully to this analysis of your comments or insisting on remaining on an academic and ''Yoruba culture custodian'' high horse''?
It should be clear by now that sweeping condemnations of Adepoju as ''frequently [crossing] into the unserious/charlatan zone because he willfully misuses information derived from rigorous research and heritage of African epistemologies, especially of the Yoruba [demonstrating] superficial hodgepodge [as opposed to] originality [and ] depth [indicating] He needs to learn how to read cultural texts rather than just making things up. Sometimes, his efforts to rework other people's ideas show glimmers of brilliance, but he is not consistent. He digresses and does not stay focused'' [ leading] those who take the spirituality of Ifa seriously [having] the right to question Toyin's motive and sanity''
are no more than ungrounded opinions without justifying why such views are held.
As for the description of my imaginative historical essay as capable of misleading people into thinking its factual history, and therefore belittles a scholarly forum such as this one, you missed the implications of the disclaimer placed as the last line in the piece, in which I stated that someone investigating the claim was unable to find the journal where it is supposed to have been published.
That indicates I was presenting myself as delivering second hand information unverified by anyone, using scholarly conventions of verification of information sources as an imaginative tool.
The construction of fictional history, of seemingly plausible but non-existent historical accounts is used as a means of exploring cultural and historical possibilities as well as of creating frameworks dramatizing ideas.
It is an established field of writing and publishing known as counterfactual history and a Google search for this yields very rich results.
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Akin Ogundiran
OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (Your perspective on fundraising is not in alignment with historical realities.
Harvard, Cambridge and other rich universities not only do fundraising, but have offices devoted to fundraising.
Adepoju has generated and is expanding a large database of self created, high quality scholarly texts across a broad range of disciplines created at his own expense, therefore his fundraising efforts are justified.
Outside academia, Wikipedia is one of the world's greatest scholarly platforms and the founder of Wikipedia does a yearly fundraising drive to support an enterprise that is providing free information to the public.
In what way is the Wikipedia initiative different from that of Adepoju who provides a large database of high quality self created scholarship free of charge to the public?
Beyond such large institutional contexts, several mechanisms, such as Go Funds Me exist for people to raise funds from the public for various projects.
So, I'm puzzled at your summation that ''Soliciting for fund from fellow scholars for independent scholarship brings the respectable calling of scholarship to beggarly ridicule and most scholars would not support it.''
I wonder how you came to the following conclusion since I dont recall discussing such with you- - The fact no supervisor will support your scholarship so far means they cannot justify the expenditure involved to their colleagues based on normal expectations.''
I am doing what I like as a scholar and I am growing thereby.
I an Independent Scholar, not an academic.
I am happy to engage anyone who engages me and will advise anyone who does not operate according to scholarly standards of engagement how best to go about it, as I have consistently done with you and as I see you have begun to abide by.
thanks
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
You have written an epistle in your capacity as an authority in Yoruba Studies who describes himself as significantly informed on such Yoruba origin spiritualities as Ifa and Ogboni.
In the spirit of critical enquiry at the heart of scholarship you claim to represent, you have been asked to justify your views.
Is the scholarship you practice one in which people make pronouncements without presenting a carefully reasoned case, with evidence, to support those views?
Yet oga professor devolves to ''it is well'', fuming that the interpretation of his work is a ''perverted reading,'' and tries to escape.
Bros, as it said in Nigeria, prepare properly next time when leaving your house.
Some of you think that your claims of ethnically privileged knowledge or of scholarly certification in the absence of demonstrable grounding in the issues at stake are of any value.
May we gain an expanded understanding of the dynamics of Yoruba spirituality within and across Yorubaland, across Africa and beyond.
It is helpful to read works like Karin Barber's ''How Man Makes God in West Africa: Yoruba Attitudes Towards the Orisa'' on the manner in which conceptions of orisa, Yoruba origin Orisa cosmology deities, are constructed, as evidenced from developments in Yoruba oral literature.
This may be fruitfully correlated with the thesis of your own book and correlated with transformations in Orisa spirituality in the Americas.
These Orisa centred explorations could be contextualized within studies of religious change in general, particularly accounts of the development of Western esotericism and new religions in the West, which demonstrate, par excellence, the constructed character of religion, and the manner in which the components that enable religious creativity are reworked across generations and actors.
Works like Robbin Hutton's drawing Down the Moon: The Rise of Modern Western Witchcraft, are helpful in understanding how various components may be integrated in creating a new religion or a modification of an old one.
The Western esoteric tradition, as described in such historical works as Neville Drury's Stealing Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Modern Western Magic, and the development of new Western religions, in general, as evidenced, for example, by the work of the University of Amsterdam school of the study of Western esotericism associated with Wouter Haanegraf, demonstrate that the development of religions are cognitive processes, operating at the intersection of human construction and inspiration, demonstrating various ways of organizing, interpreting and applying knowledge, and in the modern context, serious investment in scholarship, matrices through which relationship with sentient realities not limited to the material universe-another way of describing spirit- may be contacted.
Ifa is a spirituality of scholars and literary and ritual artists, hitherto fully oral now increasingly also scribal, scholars and artists who have brought the whole of Yoruba cosmology under their purview through references in the stories and poems they created, in relation to ritual systems they constructed. Ogboni may also be constructed along similar lines.
These ritual systems involve relationships with nature but are ultimately subsumed into a symbolic visual, verbal and performative framework evident in Ifa and Ogboni.
May we take forward the work of the ancient masters, generators of seeds ever flourishing, in ever new directions actualizing its infinite potential.
thanks
toyin
Oga Professor,
You have written an epistle in your capacity as an authority in Yoruba Studies who describes himself as significantly informed on such Yoruba origin spiritualities as Ifa and Ogboni.
In the spirit of critical enquiry at the heart of scholarship you claim to represent, you have been asked to justify your views.
Is the scholarship you practice one in which people make pronouncements without presenting a carefully reasoned case, with evidence, to support those views?
Yet oga professor devolves to ''it is well'', fuming that the interpretation of his work is a ''perverted reading,'' and tries to to escape.
Bros, as it said in Nigeria, prepare properly next time when leaving your house.
Some of you think that your claims of ethnically privileged knowledge or of scholarly certification in the absence of demonstrable grounding in the issues at stake are of any value.May we gain an expanded understanding of the dynamics of Yoruba spirituality within and across Yorubaland, across Africa and beyond.
It is helpful to read works like Karin Barber's ''How Man Makes God in West Africa: Yoruba Attitudes Towards the Orisa'' on the manner in which conceptions of orisa, Yoruba origin Orisa cosmology deities, are constructed, as evidenced from developments in Yoruba oral literature.
This may be fruitfully correlated with the thesis of your own book and correlated with transformations in Orisa spirituality in the Americas.
These Orisa centred explorations could be contextualized within studies of religious change in general, particularly accounts of the development of Western esotericism and new religions in the West, which demonstrate, par excellence, the constructed character of religion, and the manner in which the components that enable religious creativity are reworked across generations and actors.
Works like Robbin Hutton's drawing Down the Moon: The Rise of Modern Western Witchcraft, are helpful in understanding how various components may be integrated in creating a new religion or a modification of an old one.
The Western esoteric tradition, as described in such historical works as Neville Drury's Streakling Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Modern Western Magic, and the development of new Western religions, in general, as devidenced, for tge example, by the work of the University of Amsterdam school of the study of Western esotericism associated with Wouter Haanegraf, demonstrate that the development of religions are cognitive processes, operating at the intersection of human construction and inspiration, demonstrating various ways of organizing, interpreting and applying knowledge, and in the modern context, serious investment in scholarship, matrices through which relationship with sentient realities not limed to the material universe-another way of describing spirit- may be contacted.
Ifa is a spirituality of scholars and literary and ritual artists, hitherto fully oral now increasingly also scribal, scholars and artists who have brought the whole of Yoruba cosmology under their purview through references in the stories and poems they created, in relation to ritual systems they constructed. Ogboni may also be constructed along similar lines.
These ritual systems involve relationships with nature but are ultimately subsumed into a symbolic visual, verbal and performative framework evident in Ifa and Ogboni.
May we take forward the work of the ancient masters, generators of seeds ever flourishing, in ever new directions actualizing its infinite potential.
thanks
toyin
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/4cebdcab-87de-48ac-8060-336038e17e0fn%40googlegroups.com.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
You have written an epistle in your capacity as an authority in Yoruba Studies who describes himself as significantly informed on such Yoruba origin spiritualities as Ifa and Ogboni.
In the spirit of critical enquiry at the heart of scholarship you claim to represent, you have been asked to justify your views.
Is the scholarship you practice one in which people make pronouncements without presenting a carefully reasoned case, with evidence, to support those views?
Yet oga professor devolves to ''it is well'', fuming that the interpretation of his work is a ''perverted reading,'' and tries to to escape.
Bros, as it said in Nigeria, prepare properly next time when leaving your house.
Some of you think that your claims of ethnically privileged knowledge or of scholarly certification in the absence of demonstrable grounding in the issues at stake are of any value.
May we gain an expanded understanding of the dynamics of Yoruba spirituality within and across Yorubaland, across Africa and beyond.
It is helpful to read works like
Karin Barber's ''How Man Makes God in West Africa: Yoruba Attitudes Towards the
Orisa'' on the manner in which conceptions of orisa, Yoruba origin Orisa cosmology deities, are constructed, as
evidenced from developments in Yoruba oral literature.
This may be fruitfully correlated with the
thesis of your own book and correlated with transformations in Orisa spirituality in
the Americas.
These Orisa centred explorations could be contextualized within studies of religious change in
general, particularly accounts of the development of Western esotericism and
new religions in the West, which demonstrate, par excellence, the constructed
character of religion, and the manner in which the components that enable
religious creativity are reworked across generations and actors.
Works like Robbin Hutton's drawing Down the Moon: The Rise of Modern Western
Witchcraft, are helpful in understanding how various components may be integrated in creating a new religion or a modification of an old one.
The Western esoteric tradition, as described in such historical works as Neville Drury's Streakling Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Modern Western Magic, and the development of new Western religions, in general, as devidenced, for tge example, by the work of the University of Amsterdam school of the study of Western esotericism associated with Wouter Haanegraf, demonstrate that the development of religions are cognitive processes, operating at the intersection of human construction and inspiration, demonstrating various ways of organizing, interpreting and applying knowledge, and in the modern context, serious investment in scholarship, matrices through which relationship with sentient realities not limed to the material universe-another way of describing spirit- may be contacted.
Ifa is a spirituality of scholars and literary and ritual artists, hitherto fully oral now increasingly also scribal, scholars and artists who have brought the whole of Yoruba cosmology under their purview through references in the stories and poems they created, in relation to ritual systems they constructed. Ogboni may also be constructed along similar lines.
These ritual systems involve relationships with nature but are ultimately subsumed into a symbolic visual, verbal and performative framework evident in Ifa and Ogboni.
May we take forward the work of the ancient masters, generators of seeds ever flourishing, in ever new directions actualizing its infinite potential.
thanks
toyin
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/4cebdcab-87de-48ac-8060-336038e17e0fn%40googlegroups.com.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
can you examine Adepoju's claims to sufficiently understand Ogboni and demonstrate their inadequacy?
we need to go beyond dogmatic claims of ''it cannot be done'' when in fact, it has already been done.
the best that can be done by critics is to try to demonstrate the inadequacy of what has been done instead of the equivalent of shouting at a mountain.
a fruitless effort.
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
defend your views, they cannot.
keep garnering information from ''many people'' instead of sustaining your own claims of knowledge which are yet to be substantiated.
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Ibukunolu A Babajide
AN ENGLISH NURSERY RHYME
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose
The law demands that we atone
When we take things that we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine
The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back
- Anonymous (circa 1764)
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DB6PR04MB298203BD2FC111A519D9BCF8A6F20%40DB6PR04MB2982.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe are not as academically certified as myself, they don't have as many degrees as I have, and certainly not equal to my scope of intercontinental academic certification-though their cosmopolitan intellectual and institutional grounding is superb-but they represent some of the finest flowers of world scholarship, apart from their literary writing.
The same goes for the great Pierre Verger and Ulli Beier, foundational figures in the study of African cultures, the awesome Okwui Enwezor whose only degree is a BA in Political Science, yet became one of the greatest figures in the global art world, a magnificent scholar of art, a professor of art, manager of great art institutions and global art fiestas, an awesome master whom sadly most Nigerians don't know about though he passed away sadly in his 50s only last year or the year before. Master, we salute you.
Or is IBK referring to publications in academic fora, which perhaps have to be ignored by detractors even though presented at various times in this discussion by the person they insist on negatively criticizing?
Even then, does one need publications in academic fora, useful as they are, to be a good scholar?
It would be helpful if those claiming the inadequacy of Adepoju's scholarship actually tried to justify their claims.
Agbetuyi is the only one who has put in some effort along such lines, and compared with the focus on declamations rather than analytical critique represented by these other figures, my respect for him is growing.
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Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM
OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (AN ENGLISH NURSERY RHYME
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose
The law demands that we atone
When we take things that we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine
The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back
- Anonymous (circa 1764)
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DB6PR04MB298203BD2FC111A519D9BCF8A6F20%40DB6PR04MB2982.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com.
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Ibukunolu A Babajide
AN ENGLISH NURSERY RHYME
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose
The law demands that we atone
When we take things that we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine
The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back
- Anonymous (circa 1764)
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/085f33ec-ad13-4ec0-a2c8-f507a8f269bcn%40googlegroups.com.
Ibukunolu A Babajide
AN ENGLISH NURSERY RHYME
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose
The law demands that we atone
When we take things that we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine
The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back
- Anonymous (circa 1764)
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CALUsqTSxQUT6TM%2BGPJi2u2s%2BhUPWmNiDPRwJVH4-6qtEGrAZJQ%40mail.gmail.com.
Toyin Falola
Sir:
Am I the only one who sees things differently here? In that case, can the accused not plead before a judge that:
If a twig lies in the water for months, even years, it can imagine itself as a crocodile?
Or
Is a groundnut not qualified to see itself as a coffin? Or the nut inside the shell not similar to a corpse inside a coffin? If you break both coffins, are the products not food?
Toyin Adepoju has a right to his credentials, just as a drum has a right to its sound. Of course, because you don’t hear a broken drum does not mean it is not a drum. He has a right to the interpretation of that sound, just exactly like the amala woman sees her product as the best.
What I detest in all these arguments is that you all are assuming that Mr. Adepoju is a frog who sees two waters—one cold and one hot—and he deliberately jumps into the hot water. In that case, he becomes edible. I disagree, he jumps only into the cold water, but you confuse the splash with the steam.
You, like Ogundiran and Agbetuyi, is the vinegar who assumes he can catch more flies than honey.
TF
TF
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Ezinwanyi Adam
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Femi Kolapo
Femi J. Kolapo
_______
African Journal of Teacher Education || Review of Higher Education in Africa || Recreation and Society in Africa, Asia and Latin America
Sent: Sunday, December 6, 2020 4:14 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Toyin Adepoju is a genius!
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
A defender, and an unequivocal one, at last.
Great thanks, Femi Kolapo.
I could comment further on this later.
toyin
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Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM
Harrow, Kenneth
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
Sent: Sunday, December 6, 2020 3:18 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
its about the temerity of developing new ifa and ogboni.
they are incensed at what they see as denigration of the sacred institutions of their culture and perhaps other issues they are not elaborating upon, such as ''adepoju claiming to know everything' as one of them has expressed.
the other issues look ancillary to me.
even if a person piles all the degrees in the cosmos and is a prof of the humanities like falola, the outcries would still be expressed.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/03416634-6737-4404-a4af-db5d17fa8c52n%40googlegroups.com.
Harrow, Kenneth
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
Sent: Sunday, December 6, 2020 3:52 PM
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Ibukunolu A Babajide
"Sir:
Am I the only one who sees things differently here?"
My reply:
You see what you see in the man. Whatever you saw in him, qualified him in your view as a genius. I see in him also many things. The man, Toyin Vincent Adepoju from what I see qualifies as a charlatan and an impostor. I am sure what you saw and what I saw are not the same. You genuinely want to help him, but does he want to help himself? I doubt it. He is happy in his world of faking scholarship and believing his own lies. People like me, Salimonu Kadiri, and my brother Yinka Agbetuyi are not fooled or deceived by the fakery of Toyin Vincent Adepoju. We will always burst his bubble and ask him to engage in proper and deep thinking.
You wrote:
"In that case, can the accused not plead before a judge that:
If a twig lies in the water for months, even years, it can imagine itself as a crocodile?
Or
Is a groundnut not qualified to see itself as a coffin? Or the nut inside the shell not similar to a corpse inside a coffin? If you break both coffins, are the products not food?"
My response:
Toyin Vincent Adepoju has already done what you say above. I told him that he is not a twig, neither is he groundnut in a pod. No matter how much he repeats to himself that he is these imaginary fantasies, to me he is a lazy man trying to cut corners and get away with academic or scholarly fraud. I will not let him. If he wakes up and redeems himself with serious thinking I may change my mind about him. However, if he continues to name drop, perch, and fraudulently perch of the scholarship of others (e.g Abiola Irele) and he presents shallow ill-thought-out theses here, he will not get any sympathy from me.
Toyin Adepoju has a right to his credentials, just as a drum has a right to its sound. Of course, because you don’t hear a broken drum does not mean it is not a drum. He has a right to the interpretation of that sound, just exactly like the amala woman sees her product as the best.
You wrote:
"What I detest in all these arguments is that you all are assuming that Mr. Adepoju is a frog who sees two waters—one cold and one hot—and he deliberately jumps into the hot water. In that case, he becomes edible. I disagree, he jumps only into the cold water, but you confuse the splash with the steam."
My reply:
I will not begrudge you for detesting my arguments simply because I do not see or conclude as you from what you see in this man. He is not a frog and he is not jumping into an Ikogosi warm or cold water. He is a stunted thinker who imagines himself as a hippopotamus but he is less than a rat in weight or stature. If he jumps into the water, he will make no splash or steam.
You wrote:
"You, like Ogundiran and Agbetuyi, is the vinegar who assumes he can catch more flies than honey.
TF"
My reply:
On this, I will risk talking for Ogundiran and Agbetuyi. We are unlike you not in the business of seeking out the fly that is Toyin Vincent Adepoju. He is free to fly and buzz around and land on any feces he chooses, as long as he stops his puerile attempt to pass off a dog as a monkey. We will not allow him to do that. If he does we will tell him to go and sell his snake oil somewhere else. We are not conned and we are not convinced that he is a genius. He may call himself one, and he may add that he is the Pope! That is his prerogative but we will not encourage his fakery or allow him to get away with his fakery.
AN ENGLISH NURSERY RHYME
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose
The law demands that we atone
When we take things that we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine
The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back
- Anonymous (circa 1764)
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/SN7PR06MB7247A093BFB67D1C49355467F8CF0%40SN7PR06MB7247.namprd06.prod.outlook.com.
OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (
Femi J. Kolapo
_______
African Journal of Teacher Education || Review of Higher Education in Africa || Recreation and Society in Africa, Asia and Latin America
Sent: Sunday, December 6, 2020 4:14 AM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Toyin Adepoju is a genius!
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
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Femi Kolapo
Is it possible that we can engage in any serious professional work, especially work in intellection which they clearly direct at increasing the pool of working knowledge, without giving significant thought to some approval at least from some quarters from among other workers and practitioners? What would be the point to all this argument about Toyin's work then?
If we have no sense of the usefulness and effectiveness of our work, much of which sense depends on some sort of feedback from our community of practice or of knowledge, I doubt if there is any basis for such work. Even where it is work meant only to put food on the table, people pay for what they consider to give them value - because it entertains them, meets their need, or makes some sort of contribution to what they consider to be important to them or to society. They evaluate it before they pay for it.
We know that there are people who live by various ese ifa. If Toyin creates new ese ifa as he avows that he wants to and if we assume that people may begin to give such new ese ifa that he creates some logocentric essence by which they might order their lives, would he still say that his work has nothing to do with approval by others – including those who so decide to apply them to their lives or experiment with them? On the other hand, Toyin, people who feel negatively about the weight of your claim and aspiration to create new ese ifa and believe that the Yoruba culture is structured by Ifa for the same reason would have a right to evaluate your claims and your work – because they believe that it will affect their lives and that it has ramifications for Yoruba culture for good or for evil. I believe that all people who aspire to contribute to any system of knowledge do so within the context of audiences. Willy-nilly, therefore, these audiences, including those who challenge you, are assessors of your work and you, therefore, depend on them for “accreditation”.
I believe that the challenge Toyin's type of scholarly independence faces, a scholar, as he puts it, “whose audiences are various, covering various platforms within and beyond social media” is that this remote, scattered, virtual, decentralized community of practice seems rather amorphous, at least to people who are used to clear lines and structures of determining studentship, teachership, and expertise and who believe that the knowledge items in question are of existential importance than can be left to a lone scholar who has no quality assurance structures or ethical standards to guide them.
To be able to make acceptable contributions to the community of practice/ knowledge to which Toyin's interlocutors belong, it seems that it is especially the accreditation or, at least, quality assurance structure which Toyin seems to make light of that is required. These, I think are what Ken Harrow, in one of his previous posts on this issue referred to. It may be that these are the struggles and pressures that will mold how Toyin and the people he remotely works with as independent scholars in this area of primal spirituality get to establish accreditation and quality assurance structures analogous to or in some association with conventional ones.
Femi J. Kolapo
To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (Is it possible that we can engage in any serious professional work, especially work in intellection which they clearly direct at increasing the pool of working knowledge, without giving significant thought to some approval at least from some quarters from among other workers and practitioners? What would be the point to all this argument about Toyin's work then?
If we have no sense of the usefulness and effectiveness of our work, much of which sense depends on some sort of feedback from our community of practice or of knowledge, I doubt if there is any basis for such work. Even where it is work meant only to put food on the table, people pay for what they consider to give them value - because it entertains them, meets their need, or makes some sort of contribution to what they consider to be important to them or to society. They evaluate it before they pay for it.
We know that there are people who live by various ese ifa. If Toyin creates new ese ifa as he avows that he wants to and if we assume that people may begin to give such new ese ifa that he creates some logocentric essence by which they might order their lives, would he still say that his work has nothing to do with approval by others – including those who so decide to apply them to their lives or experiment with them? On the other hand, Toyin, people who feel negatively about the weight of your claim and aspiration to create new ese ifa and believe that the Yoruba culture is structured by Ifa for the same reason would have a right to evaluate your claims and your work – because they believe that it will affect their lives and that it has ramifications for Yoruba culture for good or for evil. I believe that all people who aspire to contribute to any system of knowledge do so within the context of audiences. Willy-nilly, therefore, these audiences, including those who challenge you, are assessors of your work and you, therefore, depend on them for “accreditation”.
I believe that the challenge Toyin's type of scholarly independence faces, a scholar, as he puts it, “whose audiences are various, covering various platforms within and beyond social media” is that this remote, scattered, virtual, decentralized community of practice seems rather amorphous, at least to people who are used to clear lines and structures of determining studentship, teachership, and expertise and who believe that the knowledge items in question are of existential importance than can be left to a lone scholar who has no quality assurance structures or ethical standards to guide them.
To be able to make acceptable contributions to the community of practice/ knowledge to which Toyin's interlocutors belong, it seems that it is especially the accreditation or, at least, quality assurance structure which Toyin seems to make light of that is required. These, I think are what Ken Harrow, in one of his previous posts on this issue referred to. It may be that these are the struggles and pressures that will mold how Toyin and the people he remotely works with as independent scholars in this area of primal spirituality get to establish accreditation and quality assurance structures analogous to or in some association with conventional ones.
Femi J. Kolapo
Sent: Monday, December 7, 2020 6:48 AM
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
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Pamela Smith
Dear Olayinka:
Bravo! A gigantic task you have undertaken here, indeed with Job’s patience, on behalf of Toyin Adepoju!
You hit the nail on the head SQUARELY, as these last two responses have laid out, as would a good, kind, caring Dissertation Director/Chairperson would (if one is lucky enough to find such a being). I do hope Toyin heeds these suggestions and harnesses the energy in and with which these excellent, substantive suggestions have been laid out -- title and substance ideas included – and run with them (acknowledging your assistance, of course, in the Preface to the next series of essays or BOOKs he will author and publish soon).
The tiresome exchanges (especially Toyin’s responses to his critics) which often remind me of acrimonious PhD committees’ responses, have been irksome and tortuous, akin to the kind of tug-of-war scenarios that often play out on some such committees that more often break than make PhD candidates. That, of course will not happen to Toyin since he will ensure that it doesn’t by choosing not to subject himself to the test of the sometimes agonizing rigors of FORMAL academic training and exposure. Each on to his own – and he should be indeed encouraged to produce what he professes in preparation for critical overview, as long as he is able to GROUND his ideas and pronouncements in SOLID, SELF-DEVELOPED THEORIES/PRAXIS.
You have been a true and loving friend to Toyin, indeed the kind of friend who knows and practices the art of “tough love” much more than not.
Ku ise o! Kuu suuru!
Cheers,
Pam
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DB6PR04MB2982682AF8FA2FC5ED27716BA6CB0%40DB6PR04MB2982.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
I am resending it.
Food for thought, OAA.
We don't agree but we are understanding each other better.
I don't think the notion of ese ifa as necessarily divinely inspired is sustainable nor the idea that only Yoruba hunters can compose Ijala or that only initiated Ogboni can construct new Ogboni systems,. doing all these effectively.
All these structures are systems of thought whose cognitive essence transcends their cultural and institutional origins.
Even if one is arguing for divine inspiration as guides on these activities, Orunmila, Odu, Esu and other spiritual powers associated with Ifa are best understood as cosmic forces, powers beyond human circumscription but expressed in particular ways in the Yoruba cultural matrix, a cultural expression demonstrating links of greater or lesser similarity with other perspectives around the world.
The same goes for Ogboni, centred on what is perhaps one of the oldest human venerations, of nature as centred in Earth, the Great Mother.
Thus, these forces may be approached by anyone using the symbols developed in Yoruba culture or using them in tandem with others.
To those forces, if they exist, the human race is an emergence of the equivalent of one minute so far within the vast spans of cosmic time in the context of eternity.
Why should the squabbles of such recent emergents as human beings be their problem?
Spirits are interested in relationships with humans with our various spiritualities being means of effecting such relationships, not of reifying the identity of a reality we don't fully understand, in my view.
Golden Dawn Western esoteric school superbly uses ancient Egyptian religious symbolism and ritual, in tandem with others from different cultures in developing a great system.
Such efforts inspire me, English people taking forward African spiritualities in ways different from the creators did.
So, Universal Ogboni it remains. Universal Ifa too perhaps
Along with demonstrations of how to adapt Yoruba and other African spiritual and artistic systems according to the interests of the adapter.
Great thanks.
Toyin
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CH2PR07MB6677593F50B60A14AE118C98AECB0%40CH2PR07MB6677.namprd07.prod.outlook.com.
OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
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More info Dear Olayinka:
Bravo! A gigantic task you have undertaken here, indeed with Job’s patience, on behalf of Toyin Adepoju!
You hit the nail on the head SQUARELY, as these last two responses have laid out, as would a good, kind, caring Dissertation Director/Chairperson would (if one is lucky enough to find such a being). I do hope Toyin heeds these suggestions and harnesses the energy in and with which these excellent, substantive suggestions have been laid out -- title and substance ideas included – and run with them (acknowledging your assistance, of course, in the Preface to the next series of essays or BOOKs he will author and publish soon).
The tiresome exchanges (especially Toyin’s responses to his critics) which often remind me of acrimonious PhD committees’ responses, have been irksome and tortuous, akin to the kind of tug-of-war scenarios that often play out on some such committees that more often break than make PhD candidates. That, of course will not happen to Toyin since he will ensure that it doesn’t by choosing not to subject himself to the test of the sometimes agonizing rigors of FORMAL academic training and exposure. Each on to his own – and he should be indeed encouraged to produce what he professes in preparation for critical overview, as long as he is able to GROUND his ideas and pronouncements in SOLID, SELF-DEVELOPED THEORIES/PRAXIS.
You have been a true and loving friend to Toyin, indeed the kind of friend who knows and practices the art of “tough love” much more than not.
Ku ise o! Kuu suuru!
Cheers,
Pam
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
On Behalf Of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI!
Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2020 1:40 AM
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (I am resending it.
Food for thought, OAA.
We don't agree but we are understanding each other better.
I don't think the notion of ese ifa as necessarily divinely inspired is sustainable nor the idea that only Yoruba hunters can compose Ijala or that only initiated Ogboni can construct new Ogboni systems,. doing all these effectively.
All these structures are systems of thought whose cognitive essence transcends their cultural and institutional origins.
Even if one is arguing for divine inspiration as guides on these activities, Orunmila, Odu, Esu and other spiritual powers associated with Ifa are best understood as cosmic forces, powers beyond human circumscription but expressed in particular ways in the Yoruba cultural matrix, a cultural expression demonstrating links of greater or lesser similarity with other perspectives around the world.
The same goes for Ogboni, centred on what is perhaps one of the oldest human venerations, of nature as centred in Earth, the Great Mother.
Thus, these forces may be approached by anyone using the symbols developed in Yoruba culture or using them in tandem with others.
To those forces, if they exist, the human race is an emergence of the equivalent of one minute so far within the vast spans of cosmic time in the context of eternity.
Why should the squabbles of such recent emergents as human beings be their problem?
Spirits are interested in relationships with humans with our various spiritualities being means of effecting such relationships, not of reifying the identity of a reality we don't fully understand, in my view.
Golden Dawn Western esoteric school superbly uses ancient Egyptian religious symbolism and ritual, in tandem with others from different cultures in developing a great system.
Such efforts inspire me, English people taking forward African spiritualities in ways different from the creators did.
So, Universal Ogboni it remains. Universal Ifa too perhaps
Along with demonstrations of how to adapt Yoruba and other African spiritual and artistic systems according to the interests of the adapter.
Great thanks.
Toyin
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CH2PR07MB6677593F50B60A14AE118C98AECB0%40CH2PR07MB6677.namprd07.prod.outlook.com.
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
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Gloria Emeagwali
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Are you mistaking the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a magical school of the Western esoteric tradition, which is what I am referring to, with The Popular Association-Golden Dawn, a far-right Greek political party?
Thanks
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/600B0195-0976-42C1-B862-636209FB3B2F%40gmail.com.
Emeagwali, Gloria (History)
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Toyin Adepoju is a genius!
Please be cautious: **External Email**
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Revised Senminar TitleStudying and Creating Ese Ifa, Literature of Laughter and Worship, of Adventure and DelightOn Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 08:21 Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:Studying and Creating Ese IfaSeminarSome people, somewhere, laugh at their gods.Yet they worship them.No humans, no gods, they say.Earth existed before the gods, they assert.In this world, no one fights to defend any god or belief.The sheer beauty of the celebration of nature in this world, the delightful variety in their depictions of the divine, funny and sublime, are glorious.This is the world of ese ifa, one of the world's great bodies of literature.It comes from the Yoruba people of West Africa.Encounter this ancient and magnificent tradition and learn how to create such literature as those inspired masters.No literary background is required.The course shall be taught in English.On Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 08:07 Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:The Need to Internationalise Classical Yoruba LiteratureLogic and Course of StudyAbstractA seminar description emerging from my reflections on the need to internationalise Yoruba verbal art, reflections related to discussions on this thread in particular and this group generally.I shall explain the larger logic of this initiative later.Learn to Mobilize Cosmic Force in Nature to Empower Your Life and Pursue Your GoalsWould you like to learn to use affirmations that draw on the cosmic force that pervades nature in energizing your life and pursuing your goals?Masters of verbal art among the Yoruba of West Africa developed powerful systems for this purpose, ancient methods this course will teach you how to understand and use.Mobilizing patterns in nature through powerful imagery, they directed ase, creative, cosmic force, for the achievement of specific goals.You can do the same too, with the guidance of this course.The course will be taught in English.