Àṣẹ, the Spiral and Oriki: African Verbal and Visual Philosophical Expressions as Inspirations in the Philosophy of History: Taking Forward Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yoruba A New History: A Few Words

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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Jul 13, 2023, 2:51:45 PM7/13/23
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                                                                        Àṣẹ, the Spiral and Oriki

           African Verbal and Visual Philosophical Expressions as Inspirations in the Philosophy of History

                                    Taking Forward Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yoruba:A New History

                                                                        A Few Words


                                                            Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                                                        Compcros

                                                 Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

                                       Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge

                                         

                                                                          Abstract

Inspired by the achievements and possibilities of Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yoruba: A New History, this essay lays foundations for a philosophy of history inspired by Yoruba thought in dialogue with other African systems of thought. 



The Achievement and Promise of Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yoruba : A New History

Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yoruba : A New History haunts me through its achievement and its promise. Its description of its purpose is spellbinding and its execution of that purpose, compelling.

I wonder, however, about the degree to which that deeply inspiring statement of purpose has been actualized. Ogundiran's work re-constructs  Yoruba history in a way that dramatizes the progressive emergence of Yoruba thought from its geographical, social and economic contexts, and the influence of that thought on those socio-economic iterations.

From my exposure so far to Yoruba history, this seems to be the most salient ideational contribution of that book to accounts of that history. Within this central ideational structure may be found his strikingly illuminating readings of central conceptual  nodes in Yoruba thought and its social contexts, such as his account of the principle of complementary duality and his development of a philosophy of Orisa cosmology integrating the present, the past and infinity.

The expressive force of Ogundiran's accounts of the dynamism of Yoruba history, represented by narrative design and poetic luminosity communicated through imagistic vividness  and metaphoric force, qualities generating imaginative immersion and reflective power, would itself be a great achievement, but his ideational complexes summing up central points of the crystallization of this story make the work even more memorable.

Within this structure, though, opportunities to fill in particular ideational gaps emerge. In my ongoing reading of the book, I  have not observed  references to philosophies or conceptions of history as developed within Yoruba thought or as may be understood in relation to it, talk less efforts to engage such ideas in exploring the development of Yoruba thought and in its socio-economic interrelations.

         Do There Exist Yoruba Philosophies or Conceptions of History or  Philosophies of History Influenced             by Yoruba Thought?

Did classical Yoruba thinkers reflect on the significance of human experience as a temporal progression? Did they develop any insights on the factors that shape this dynamic? Did they construct any conceptions about the ultimate direction, if any, of this motion from the past to the present and the future?

From my exposure to Yoruba philosophy so far, these aspects of Yoruba thought are not highlighted in the literature, which may be seen to be still at the stage of developing its foundations, presenting and clarifying its concepts and working out their immediate and more extensive implications, a goal to which this essay hopes to contribute, enabling more expansive developments through further engagement with the ideas presented.

Yoruba conceptions of the significance of history and of how to explore history are obvious from the questions I presented above, depending on how one interprets what is already known about Yoruba thought. These ideas from Yoruba thought are also better appreciated in relation to interpretations of similar concepts and to other ideas from other bodies of African thought.

What is Yoruba Thought?

Yoruba thought may be understood as the body of ideas developed in what is now known as Yorubaland as it exists in Nigeria and contiguous geographical  expressions divided by colonial borders, the diffusion of these ideas to the African diaspora and the development of these conceptions by different peoples in various parts of the world.

Hence, Yoruba thought is represented as much by its traditional expressions, central to which is Orisa cosmology and its best known epistemic vehicle, Ifa, as by all those who develop these traditional bodies of knowledge, from Ogundiran on Orisha cosmology, to Kolawole Ositola on relationships between memory, time and knowledge, to Margaret Thompson Drewal's conceptualization  of Ositola's ideas in terms of the image of a spiral, to Wole Soyinka's correlative image of the Abyss of Transition, to Olabiyi Yai on dynamism in relation to Ori theory of the self, and Yai, Rowland Abiodun, Henry John Drewal and  Karen Barber on Yoruba oriki discourse as strategic to relationships between conceptions of the nature of beings and the development of these natures through time, at the intersection of ideas of immediacy and permanence, of essence and expression, temporality and infinity, ultimate origination and temporal expression, ideas and their shapers representing Yoruba and non-Yoruba people pursuing common goals, engaged in a united enterprise, the study and development of Yoruba thought.

The names and ideas listed in the paragraph immediately above represent the circumference of my current understanding of this field, invoking ideas and thinkers of particular significance to what I understand as Yoruba philosophies or conceptions of history, but not including thinkers from the African diaspora represented by African-America and the diffusion of these ideas to Cuba and South America, as well as their expression in Francophone Africa, areas significant for Yoruba thought but about which I am less informed.

Image and Text: Spiral of Possibility

                                                                                   
                                  Screenshot (1534).png


The spiral, as imaged above by Nigerian artist Fidelis Odogwu Eze. is a useful motif for understanding and further developing conceptions of history from African thought.


The spiral image may represent a perception of human life as both cyclical and potentially transgressive of repetition.

This cyclical and creatively transgressive rhythm is demonstrated in ideas of reincarnation, in the understanding of life as a recurrence expressed in terms of new features, of the coinherence of the predictable and the unpredictable, the anticipated and the unanticipated, a recurrence enabling consistency within change and therefore ensuring ultimate stability and the possibility of coherent existence, of cosmos instead of chaos, of  the capacity of interpreting the present in terms of its actualized and unrealized possibilities as deriving from or breaking from a past in which they are nevertheless embedded, a journey represented by the illumination enabled as well as symbolized by the sun as physical luminary and cognitive symbol, as the human person journeys towards possibilities of infinity existing within the present moment at the intersection of  matter and spirit, temporality and infinity,   adapting Margaret Thomson Drewal's interpretation, in Yoruba Ritual,  of babalawo-adept in the esoteric knowledge of Ifa-Kolawole Ositola, on intergenerational transmission of cognitive vocations in Yoruba knowledge systems, the Cross River Nsibidi symbol of the spiral as employed by artist Victor Ekpuk, Igbo Uli spiral symbolism, Benin Olokun igha-ede symbolism and the symbolism of the Yoruba origin orisa or deity Eshu in terms of both the co-existence of contraries and dynamic motion enabled by  àṣẹ, the principle of individual identity and unique creative possibility.

The evocation of spiral motion in Eze's piece may represent motion as both circular and transcendent of the circular as the multiply coloured flakes constituting the spiral and dispersed from it or coagulating within it may suggest the myriad insights and possibilities emerging from this spiral motion.


 Ogundiran's powerful use of Yoruba proverbs in The Yoruba  may be understood in relation to such a spiral conception of history. Proverbs mediate between the past, the present, the future and the infinite by seeking to encapsulate insights from the past through often imagistic forms understood as having perennial significance, igniting new sparks of cognitive value when adequately employed in new contexts.

They are therefore powerful vehicles of narrative exposition and interpretation, as Ogundiran demonstrates, expressions of a system of knowledge  which seeks to encapsulate all possibilities through methods sensitive to new unfoldings as developments of ancient matrices.

''Towmorrow is different from today, so the babalawo divines everday'' goes a Yoruba expression suggesting the dynamism of reality within the context of seeking to understand phenomena through the convergence of the entire spectrum of possibilities that shape reality, as Yoruba origin Ifa divination may be described.

This orientation suggests a hermeneutic, a philosophy and practice of interpretation, privileging unceasing sensitivity to the novel, to the emergence of new possibilities in the convergence of influences within the armbit of time, a creativity represented by the calabash symbolism evoked by the empty centre of the opon ifa, the Ifa divination platform and cosmological symbol, a centre where the odu symbol  permutations emerge in divination, and which, adapting  Shloma Rosenberg on a name for the supreme creator in Yoruba thought, ''Olodumare'', ''Owner of Odu'', ''the calabash of never ending possibilities, the matrix from which each moment is born'', a hermeneutic defined by the intersection of individual and group identity and the contexts of existence, within the convergence of predictability and unpredictability  navigated through degrees of access to creative orientations, as Yoruba ori theory, Igbo chi theory and Kalabari teme and so theory, the latter as interpreted by Nimi Wariboko, may be correlated in terms of Ifa hermeneutics and with the idea of Eshu as a central interpretive agent within this hermeneutic, a hermeneutic that could be helpful in developing a historiography, a method of studying history.










Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth

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Jul 13, 2023, 6:55:12 PM7/13/23
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Toyin thanks for  this  write up.you are a credit to this forum  and to scholarship. I like  your prose.you are a  master of prose. I have a lot to learn  from you.
Augustine 
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Michael Afolayan

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Jul 14, 2023, 6:14:06 AM7/14/23
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Oluwatoyin:

This is beautifully written. 

May I suggest that you submit this to the Yoruba Studies Review as a book review or, if expatiated a bit, as an article in its own right. I just hate to see something that is founded in sound intellection roam the cyberspace of the scial media when its place is in academia. Give it a thought please!

MOA


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Michael Afolayan

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Jul 14, 2023, 8:46:21 AM7/14/23
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Oluwatoyin:

This is beautifully written. 

May I suggest that you submit this to the Yoruba Studies Review as a book review or, if expatiated a bit, as an article in its own right. I just hate to see something that is founded in sound intellection roam the cyberspace of the scial media when its place is in academia. Give it a thought please!

MOA






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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Jul 14, 2023, 8:46:21 AM7/14/23
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great thanks Augustine

im honoured

toyin

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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Jul 14, 2023, 9:23:32 AM7/14/23
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Great thanks, Prof. Afolayan.

You've made my day.

Great thanks for your suggestions. I'll submit the piece you commented on to the Yoruba Review as a book review since that is the scope of work I can assure myself of doing right now in relation to the essay.

Shortly after I  woke up on the day I wrote that piece, the ideas suddenly lit up in my mind, like an instantaneous  brightness eclipsing everything else, overshadowing all other things on my mind, even though I had not been thinking of them that morning or focusing attention on them for some time,   buzzing and  sweetly tormenting me.

I recognized such a visitation as an important opportunity emerging from the ongoing ripening of ideas one has been considering, an opportunity requiring I put everything aside to address it while the fire was still bright and that I did.

I pray Ogundiran achieves much more than that book. From my knowledge of scholarship, though, if a person is able to produce two books like that in a lifetime of 100 years, humanity will forever owe the person gratitude for having superbly  represented our creative capacities, setting up a shrine to make daily prostrations of gratitude to that person. 

The current controversies over the identity of Ilorin take my mind to Ogundiran's  superb narration of the incursion of the Fulani jihad into what is now known as Yorubaland, the the defeat of Ilorin, the  destruction of  Oyo-Ile,  the final stopping of the Fulani troops at the Battle of Oshogbo, and the premier role of Ibadan in that achievement, the eventual expansionist sweep of Ibadan, and the devastating internecine wars erupting, stopped only by the efforts of British colonialism, if I recall these incidents clearly enough. Apologies for any mistakes in this recounting. 

great thanks
toyin




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Harrow, Kenneth

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Jul 14, 2023, 12:55:13 PM7/14/23
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toyin wrote:

The spiral, as imaged above by Nigerian artist Fidelis Odogwu Eze. is a useful motif for understanding and further developing conceptions of history from African thought.


The spiral image may represent a perception of human life as both cyclical and potentially transgressive of repetition.


one of my favorite discoveries in reading about relativity is how the spiral, or helix, or elliptical movement, characterizes the movements of bodies in the universe when considered in terms of space-time. we all know the earth goes around the sun; but when time is factored in, spacetime becomes curved, so that the body circling around the central point actually moves in an elliptical path, never coming back precisely to where it started.
that is the image toyin captures in his use of the spiral in the essay. a lovely conception when turned, as he does, to metaphysics.
klen

kenneth harrow

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michigan state university

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From: 'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, July 14, 2023 12:08 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>; Yoruba Affairs <yoruba...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Àṣẹ, the Spiral and Oriki: African Verbal and Visual Philosophical Expressions as Inspirations in the Philosophy of History: Taking Forward Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yoruba A New History: A Few Words
 

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Jul 14, 2023, 4:07:59 PM7/14/23
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Great thanks for that beautiful intervention Ken.

Could you please help me understand what is meant by "spacetime"?

Keep coming across it but don't adequately understand it.

Thanks

Toyin


Harrow, Kenneth

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Jul 14, 2023, 4:19:58 PM7/14/23
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Spacetime is one of the most exciting of ideas. It was formed about 1915 or so by minkowski, einstein’s teacher and mentor. Although einstein published on it, it was minkowski who published first, and it is now known, also, as minkowski space.
Spacetime is the three dimensions of space, as we know and perceive it, with a fourth dimension added, time. In combining these 4 dimensions, equations that precise where we are located now have to include time—and because it is 4 dimensions, it is beyond our poor limited abilities to perceive.
The descriptions of spacetime i’ve seen suggest a grid that appears warped, since gravity pulls on everything, creating a warped appearance. This depends on the notion that gravity’s influence on objects varies their temporality and dimensions, depending on their relative speeds. Bringing gravity’s influence into the questions opens us to general relativity.

The beauty of spacetime means that as time influences the entire grid of our universe, and as time varies according to relativity and gravity, we no longer occupy a classical newtonian space. That’s why your notion of spirals or helixes or elliptical motion works so well—it takes into account time, enabling us to incorporate the full 4 dimensions of spacetime.

I believe what led to this discovery and its proof was the motion of mercury as it passed around the sun, and as its light was bent by the gravitational pull of the sun. It was unexpected, and einstein proved its explanation lay in the equations of spacetime.
Ken
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Sent: Friday, July 14, 2023 3:44:19 PM
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Jul 14, 2023, 4:56:16 PM7/14/23
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Great thanks Ken

Written like a physicist.

The whole thing is sublime. What kinds of environments facilitate such exalted thought, seeking understanding without any practical end or profit in view except the sheer satisfaction of knowing?

I am  chewing slowly on what you've written so as to help me gradually enter the arcanum.

I expect reading your book would also  help.

I really admire the way you have structured your writing and publishing career, from your earlier articles and particularly solid books on Islam in Africa and on thought orientations in African literature and then to African cinema and now discussing sophisticated science in relation to African cinema.

The beauty of scholarship, a freedom to explore anything, anytime.

Thanks
Toyin







Dompere, Kofi Kissi

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Jul 14, 2023, 5:41:24 PM7/14/23
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GREAT DISCUSSIONS.

THOSE INTERETE IN THESE QUESTIONS MAY PARTICIPOATE

OVER THIS SITE

Foundational Questions Institute - FQxI

 

THANKS

KOFI

 

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                                                                        Àṣẹ, the Spiral and Oriki


                                                                                   

                                  

Harrow, Kenneth

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Jul 14, 2023, 5:41:24 PM7/14/23
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Thanks for your kind words, toyin. Your open mind is an inspiration to many here.
I am grateful you mention my book: SPace and Time in African CInema. I begin with a chapter that explains the science of relativity and quantum, with one hope. That the kinds of questions scientists have been led to ask in the past 120 years will inspire us in the arts to ask questions we have been avoiding, basic questions about time and space. Especially time and space in our field, in our works of art, literature, and now cinema. I believe, thanks to  such inspiring figures as george lemaitre (the brilliant catholic priest who first postulated the Big Bang) that we would benefit enormously by learning the basic scientific notions of our times, and working with the kinds of questions they open up for us. 
No more divide between science and arts. Their brilliant physicist, rovelli, is inspired by greek philosophers and their thought. We have our african thinkers and creators whose works inspire the world, and now must be put in dialogue with the great exciting understandings that science is providing. Not to defer to anything, but to be mutually informed and inspired.
I run again the headwinds of those who refuse any knowledge of the "West," i know it. But it isn't the west, it is belongs to all of us, and we will profit from what others have been discovering as they will by engaging with us.
I believe time and space are created by african cineastes; now, let's get on with describing it as much as we can.
I see your making the effort to do this with yoruba thought, toyin, all the time. Bravo for that creative spirit.
Ken
Sent: Friday, July 14, 2023 4:38:00 PM

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Jul 14, 2023, 5:48:25 PM7/14/23
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Great thanks Kofi 

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Jul 14, 2023, 8:35:50 PM7/14/23
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Great thanks Ken

Abiola Irele has a very exciting engagement between science and Yoruba Orisha cosmology in "The African Scholar"

Thanks

Toyin

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Harrow, Kenneth

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Jul 15, 2023, 2:54:31 PM7/15/23
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Hi toyin, it is very tricky to read an ethnic cosmology in relation to a scientific cosmology, as the question of reading the former allergorically or symbolically bumps into belief and literal readings.
I’d like to see what ole abiola did with it.
My concern was not to read african texts—be they literary or cinematic—symbolically or metaphorically. I am not actually interested in that, when bringing in science, since i don’t want to put science in the position of being the truthful or real version and other cosmologies as being metaphors for it.
What would be the most productive for us (in the arts)? To open up approaches with new questions that take us outside our own specialized field. 
Ken
Sent: Friday, July 14, 2023 6:03:17 PM

Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth

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Jul 15, 2023, 5:45:10 PM7/15/23
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Kenneth  harrow  you've  read a great deal of physics and science. On the same page as c.p. snow  on the two cultures.i salute you!
Augustine


On Friday, July 14, 2023, Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu> wrote:
toyin wrote:

The spiral, as imaged above by Nigerian artist Fidelis Odogwu Eze. is a useful motif for understanding and further developing conceptions of history from African thought.


The spiral image may represent a perception of human life as both cyclical and potentially transgressive of repetition.


one of my favorite discoveries in reading about relativity is how the spiral, or helix, or elliptical movement, characterizes the movements of bodies in the universe when considered in terms of space-time. we all know the earth goes around the sun; but when time is factored in, spacetime becomes curved, so that the body circling around the central point actually moves in an elliptical path, never coming back precisely to where it started.
that is the image toyin captures in his use of the spiral in the essay. a lovely conception when turned, as he does, to metaphysics.
klen

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: 'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>

Sent: Friday, July 14, 2023 12:08 AM
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Harrow, Kenneth

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Jul 15, 2023, 10:40:46 PM7/15/23
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Hi augustine, i don’t want to overstate my knowledge of science.
I have some, and i’ll tell you how i got it. Chidi should care about this. I went to MIT to study physics; wasn’t crazy about it; did math for two years, and then switched to the humanities, with a BS in humanities and math. My graduate degrees were in comparative literature, and as you know i became an africanist about 4 years after getting my ph d in 1970. I worked only on african literature and cinema, and the postcolonial theory etc., until retirement in 2018. My interest in science was re-kindled then, and i read a lot on physics, cosmology, starting with thebasics, stephen hawking and then many others. I discovered first space as a topic tied to cinema, thanks to relativity; and then time,the most exciting topic imaginable. 
It is absolutely possible to understand the science without working the equations, equations are only a shorthand way of expressing something we can put into concepts and words. And those concepts are directly relevant to our work. As i saidbefore, the notion that our creative works create time and space becomes meaningful when you get basic relativity and use it in relationship to different frames in cinema. What questions can we ask? Why not consider the questions the scientists consider. For instance, i just read this: 

The outcome of measurements within quantum theory appears to be probabilistic. But many physicists prefer to think that what appears as randomness is just the quantum system and the measuring apparatus interacting with the environment. They don’t see it as some fundamental feature of reality.

We use the term "apparatus theory" in cinema, and although that is tied to marxist notions of ideology, it can be applied to the sentence of the quantum physicist above directly. Really, it has to set you thinking, what can we do with this?
Ken


From: 'Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 15, 2023 3:59:26 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
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Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth

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Jul 15, 2023, 11:29:31 PM7/15/23
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Amazing.  I was just thinking  about mit a few minutes ago before I saw your write up..  I am a physics  drop out whose chose to become a writer.  I am still trying to be one
Augustine


On Sunday, July 16, 2023, Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu> wrote:
Hi augustine, i don’t want to overstate my knowledge of science.
I have some, and i’ll tell you how i got it. Chidi should care about this. I went to MIT to study physics; wasn’t crazy about it; did math for two years, and then switched to the humanities, with a BS in humanities and math. My graduate degrees were in comparative literature, and as you know i became an africanist about 4 years after getting my ph d in 1970. I worked only on african literature and cinema, and the postcolonial theory etc., until retirement in 2018. My interest in science was re-kindled then, and i read a lot on physics, cosmology, starting with thebasics, stephen hawking and then many others. I discovered first space as a topic tied to cinema, thanks to relativity; and then time,the most exciting topic imaginable. 
It is absolutely possible to understand the science without working the equations, equations are only a shorthand way of expressing something we can put into concepts and words. And those concepts are directly relevant to our work. As i saidbefore, the notion that our creative works create time and space becomes meaningful when you get basic relativity and use it in relationship to different frames in cinema. What questions can we ask? Why not consider the questions the scientists consider. For instance, i just read this: 

The outcome of measurements within quantum theory appears to be probabilistic. But many physicists prefer to think that what appears as randomness is just the quantum system and the measuring apparatus interacting with the environment. They don’t see it as some fundamental feature of reality.

We use the term "apparatus theory" in cinema, and although that is tied to marxist notions of ideology, it can be applied to the sentence of the quantum physicist above directly. Really, it has to set you thinking, what can we do with this?
Ken


From: 'Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>

Sent: Saturday, July 15, 2023 3:59:26 PM

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Àṣẹ, the Spiral and Oriki: African Verbal and Visual Philosophical Expressions as Inspirations in the Philosophy of History: Taking Forward Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yoruba A New History: A Few Words
Kenneth  harrow  you've  read a great deal of physics and science. On the same page as c.p. snow  on the two cultures.i salute you!
Augustine

On Friday, July 14, 2023, Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu> wrote:
toyin wrote:

The spiral, as imaged above by Nigerian artist Fidelis Odogwu Eze. is a useful motif for understanding and further developing conceptions of history from African thought.


The spiral image may represent a perception of human life as both cyclical and potentially transgressive of repetition.


one of my favorite discoveries in reading about relativity is how the spiral, or helix, or elliptical movement, characterizes the movements of bodies in the universe when considered in terms of space-time. we all know the earth goes around the sun; but when time is factored in, spacetime becomes curved, so that the body circling around the central point actually moves in an elliptical path, never coming back precisely to where it started.
that is the image toyin captures in his use of the spiral in the essay. a lovely conception when turned, as he does, to metaphysics.
klen

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: 'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, July 14, 2023 12:08 AM

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