Update on Forthcoming Books on Yoruba Aesthetics as Mediated by Rowland Abiodun and Babatunde Lawal
Discussions with Cambridge UP
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Compcros
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
I feel high.
This project will include a critical commentary on each of these essays, a comparison of Abiodun and Lawal's productivity as mutually illuminating and an introduction placing their work within the context of what I have named the Ife School of Yoruba Studies, the matrix in which their scholarly careers have been created, a formation evident even after they left the then University of Ife for the US.
The project will also gather in one volume all essays responding to Abiodun's representative collection and ideational reframing of his life work, the 2014 Yoruba Art and Language : Seeking the African in African Art, one of the most significant volumes on the classical aesthetics of an African people, demonstrating a conceptual depth, imaginative power and expressive clarity that make it strategic in explorations of aesthetics, on relationships between the visual and verbal arts, philosophy and spirituality, a universality of value I am committed to demonstrating for his work and that of Lawal.
As we discuss Neoplatonic and Romantic aesthetics of relationships between between ideal and expression, archetypes and manifestations, noumena and phenomena, as we examine Hindu aesthetics of Yantra, mantra and matter, of cosmic essences in terms of geometric and sonic forms in material expressions, we should be able to also discuss relationships between Orí and orí, between Òrò and òrò, between òwe and oríkì, between consciousness as metaphysical foundation and consciousness as individual identity, between discourse as primordial capacity and discourse as social dynamic, between metaphorical expression in vision, sound and action and the depiction of the unfolding of being across time and space, these being my interpretations of the preceding Yoruba terms foregrounded by Abiodun in Yoruba Art and Language.
We should be able to explore how these ideas are dramatized in relationships between àwòrán, awòran and ìwòran,
the perceived, the perceiver and the process of perception, as Lawal explores these Yoruba epistemic terms in ''Àwòrán: Representing the Self and its Metaphysical Other in Yoruba Art,'' issues resonating with the arts of the human body, the dialectic between the divine and the human as mutually implicating frameworks of dynamism and
perfection, gender dynamics within cosmic and human creativity, these orientations summing up some of Lawal's research engagements, examining these subjects in expanding our capacities for engaging in depth and interculturality of discourse across geographies.
My vision is to make such masterworks as the creations of Abiodun and Lawal better understood and appreciated within and beyond the world of the scholarly domains that are their specialties, through lucidity and depth of exposition, enriched by imagistic feasts that project the charge of the ideas being discussed, presented both in terms of free open-access texts and through productions that are readily affordable anywhere in the world.
You are invited to contribute materially to this project through a donation.
Work in Action on the Project
The initial stages of this project are represented by the following initiatives:
From the Indigenous to the Universal in the Study of Yoruba Aesthetics: Babatunde Lawal, Rowland Abiodun and Beyond (essay)
Exploring Intersections of African Discourses: Celebrating Olabiyi Yai, Scholar Extraordinaire of African Arts and Philosophies (essay) ( Yai's work is vital for understanding Abiodun's initiatives in Yoruba Art and Language).
OríkìGenesis:Olabiyi Yai’s Oríkì Philosophy as a Paradigm for Human Development (essay) ( A development from studying Yai's work)
Àwòrán, Awòran, Ìwòran: Perceived, Perceiver and Process of Perception: Yoruba Aesthetic Concepts as a Paradigm for Living (essay) ( An examination of the existential implications, beyond art, of Lawal's work on Yoruba epistemology)
The Cosmos in a Staff: The Glory of Ọpa Ọsanyin, an Understudied Example of Great Yorùbá Art Part 1: Avian Aesthetics
(Essay) ( Inspired by my use, in a forthcoming essay, of the symbolism of the structure of Ọpa Ọsanyin, a staff representing Ọsanyin, the Yoruba deity of the spiritual and biological power of plants, in terms of a group of birds surrounding an elevated, lone bird, in evoking the unity of individual aspiration around a collective vision in constituting the Ife School of Yoruba Studies to which Abiodun and Lawal belong).
The Cosmos in a Staff : The Glory of Ọpa Ọsanyin: An Understudied Example of Great Yoruba Art : Part 2 : Interpretive Contexts
(Essay) ( A further development of the inspiration described of the immediately preceding essay).
An overview of Lawal's work, correlating it with the philosophy, spirituality and art of the Yoruba origin Earth and humanity centred Ogboni esoteric order.
A comparative exploration of three Yoruba cosmogonic narratives, enriched by a broad range of art from different parts of the world, images reinforced by correlative commentary by myself.
The essay was inspired by reading the first part of the first chapter of Abiodun's Yoruba Art and Language.
