By Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
The Question
What is original, what is new, in Toyin Falola’s suggestion of the new academic field of African Ancestral Studies and what represents a continuity of older ideas in this formulation?
What is original in Falola’s constitution of this field of enquiry is the integration of the study of endogenous African systems and processes of knowledge in terms of one field of study, facilitating dialogue between the findings and methods of various disciplines, enabling the creation of holistic bodies of knowledge in which interdisciplinary insights are integrated.
This field of study takes forward the insights, initiatives and methods of various disciplines in African Studies in the effort to foreground endogenous African bodies of knowledge, a central thrust of African Studies since the 60s and 70s and increasingly gathering momentum as part of the current emphasis on decolonizing the academic curriculum.
The Historical Context
The achievements of the Ibadan History School represented by Ade Ajayi, Kenneth Dike and others in exploring African history as lived by Africans and as seen through their eyes; the contribution to the creation of modern Nigerian art by the Zaria Rebels, Uche Okeke, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Yusuf Grillo and other members of the Zaria Art Society in unifying African subjects and artistic methods with Western techniques during and after their time at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, Zaria; Ruth Finnegan’s decisive publication of her book African Oral Literature, signalling the establishment of understanding of the literary character of African orature, complemented by such works as Isidore Okpewho’s The Epic in Africa, initiatives putting paid to the ignorance highlighted by Wole Soyinka in his account, in Myth , Literature and the African World, of an early fellowship of his at Cambridge University where he learnt some influential people held that “there is no such mythical beast as African literature; the philosophical achievements of Kwesi Wiredu, Paulin Hountundji, Abiola Irele and other foundational and later figures in African philosophy destroying the notion that the term “African philosophy is an oxymoron”, as I once heard someone declare; Rowland Abiodun, Babatunde Lawal, Barry Hallen and Olubunmi Sodipo on Yoruba aesthetics, epistemology-theories of knowledge and ethics-concepts of right and wrong; Aimee Dafon Segla on Yoruba mathematics and astronomy; Ron Eglash on African fractals; various works on the mathematics of Adinkra as created by the Akan and Gyaman of Ghana; Abdul Karim Bangura, Gloria Emeagwali and others on diverse aspects of science created within distinctively African contexts, and, in more recent times, the creation of a new style of filmmaking represented by Nigeria’s Nollywood, an example given by Falola in his recent introduction of the new field of study at the University of Ghana, are all initiatives, emerging in the 60s and 70s and ongoing, within and beyond academia, demonstrating the ultimate rationale of the new field of study Falola is initiating-foregrounding endogenous African creativity in all aspects of endeavour, exploring its contemporary, future and historic significance, but, in Falola’s new formulation, pursuing this goal in terms of interdisciplinary dialogue, as engaged with by individual scholars and constructed within learning and research programs conducted in the contexts of institutions of learning.
The New Initiative
This initiative is similar to literary critic Meyer Howard Abrams’description of his achievement in his book The Mirror and the Lamp as the provision of a ribbon tying together previously existing material.
The ribbon, in this instance, is the new, unified field of study Falola is presenting. The previously existing material is the investigation of endogenous African knowledge as evident in various disciplines.
The Significance of Multidisciplinarity, Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity
What is the significance of such interdisciplinary dialoguing, after all, the methods of various disciplines, and, at times, their subjects of study are distinct?
Such dialogue, as is increasingly recognized in emphases on interdisciplinarity, multidisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity, facilitates constructing a synoptic understanding of existence, seeing the universe from various windows, windows, however, which are varied vantage points in the same house, the universe understood as a unified spectrum of possibilities.
This image, adapting Ulli Beier’s interpretation, in The Return of the Gods: The Sacred Art of Susanne Wenger, of Yoruba origin Orisha cosmology in terms of relationships between the orisha or deities, representing the universe as seen from the varied vantage points embodied by each orisha, unified in Olodumare, the creator of the universe, the sum total of all possibilities, is one approach to a perennial aspiration of the human mind across cultures, to understand the universe as a whole constituted by diverse but interrelated parts, parts requiring distinctive but ultimately interrelated strategies to understand, this being a somewhat basic description of what may be better understood as the effort to appreciate the seamless constitution of the universe in terms of its own intrinsic nature and the varied efforts of the human being to understand it, efforts representing the universe trying to understand itself, through the aspirations of human consciousness as an aspect of that universe, leading to the question suggested by Argentinian writer Jorge Louis Borges-to what degree are humanity’s efforts to understand the universe simply an addition to the universe , to the possibilities constituted by its ever unfolding wholeness and to what degree are they achievements in perceiving the universe from a pedestal that transcends its own configurations, the configurations of that whole to which the human being belongs?
Descending from such lofty heights of speculation, multidisciplinarity in the endogenous African context is demonstrated by healing systems, which, at their best, recognize the totality of the human being, as an individual as well as a social creature, for example, as Adeoye Lambo argues as fundamental for African approaches to psychiatric healing which he adapted in Aro Psychiatric Hospital in Nigeria; they involve the unity of mathematics, art and philosophy, as in Adinkra; of mathematics, literature, visual and performative arts, spirituality and philosophy, as in the Yoruba origin Ifa knowledge system; of relationships between space, time, spirituality and government through art in the lukasa mapping system of the Luba; of visual and performative arts, spatial organization of objects, spirituality and philosophy of the Nsibidi symbol system from Nigeria’s Cross River, among the few examples I am aware of in Africa’s landscape of interdisciplinary creativity.
The circle of the calabash and the pot, integrating the sweep of eternity and the bottomless depth of being; the spiral of being and becoming, of human existence defined by the sun of physical sustenance and mental illumination on the journey of life progressing against the context of infinity, images from Zulu, Igbo, Yoruba and Cross River thought, represent approaches of the human being trying to make sense of existence within the mysterious immensity in which he finds himself.
