Epistemic Roots, Universal Routes and Ontological Roofs of African “Ritual Archives”: Disciplinary Formations in African Thought

One may compose an essay on another essay, and possibly an even longer one than the essay being studied, long as that one is, when one is confronted with one of those things one has to say something about after encountering them. “Ritual Archives”, the climatic conclusion of the account in The Toyin Falola Reader ( Austin: Pan African University, 2018), of the efforts of Africa and its Americas Diaspora to achieve political, economic, intellectual and cultural individuality, is a deeply intriguing, ideationally, structurally and stylistically powerful and inspiring work, rich with ideas and arresting verbal and visual images. His focus is Africa and its Diaspora, but his thought resonates with implications far beyond Africa, into contexts of struggle for plurality of vision outside and even within the West, the global dominance of whose central theoretical constructs inspires Falola’s essay. “Ritual Archives”, oscillates between the analytical and the poetic, the ruminative and the architectonic, expressive styles pouring out a wealth of ideas, which, even though adequately integrated, are not always adequately elaborated on. This essay responds to the resonance of those ideas, further illuminating their intrinsic semantic values and demonstrating my perception of the intersections of the concerns they express with issues beyond the African referent of “Ritual Archives”. This response is organized in five parts, representing my understanding of the five major thematic strategies through which the central idea is laid out and expanded. 316 Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju The first section, “Developing Classical African Expressions as Sources of Locally and Universally Valid Theory” explores Falola’s advocacy for an expanded cultivation of theory from Africa created and Africa inspired expressive forms. “Epistemic and Metaphysical Integrity in Ifá”, the second part, examines his argument for a re-centering of studies in classical African thought within the epistemic and metaphysical frames of those bodies of knowledge, using the Yoruba origin Ifá system of knowledge, spiritual development and divination as an example, an illustration I analyze through my own understanding of the cognitive and metaphysical framework of Ifá. The third unit, “Falola’s Image Theory and Praxis, Image as Archive, Image as Initiator”, demonstrates Falola’s dramatization of the cognitive possibilities of works of art as inspirers of theory, exemplified by a figurine of the Yoruba origin òrìṣà cosmology, the deity Esu. This is the most poetic and one of the most imaginatively, ideationally evocative and yet tantalizingly inadequately elaborated sections of “Ritual Archives”, evoking continuities between Yoruba philosophy, òrìṣà cosmology and various bodies of knowledge across art and image theory and history, without expanding on the ideas or building them into a structure adequately responsive to the promise of the ideas projected, a foundation I contribute to developing by elucidating my understanding of the significance of the ideas and their consonance with related conceptions and issues from Asian, Western and African cultures. I also demonstrate how this section may contribute to clarification of the nature of Yoruba philosophy understood as a body of ideas on the scope of human intelligibility and the relationship between that philosophy and òrìṣà cosmology, an expansive view of the cosmos developed in relation to the philosophy. This is a heuristic rather than an attempt at a definitive distinction and is derived from the relationship between my practical and theoretical investigation of Yoruba epistemology and Falola’s exploration, in “Ritual Archives”, of a particularly strategic aspect of òrìṣà cosmology represented by Esu. The distinction I advance between Yoruba philosophy and òrìṣà cosmology and the effort to map their interrelations is useful in categorizing and critically analyzing various postulates that constitute classical Yoruba thought. This mapping of convergence and divergence contributes to working out the continuum in Yoruba thought between a critical and experiential configuration and a belief system. The fourth section, “The Institutional Imperative”, discusses Falola’s careful working out of the institutional implications of the approach he advocates of developing locally and universally illuminating theory out of endogenous African cultural forms. The fifth part, “Imagistic Resonance”, presents Falola’s effort to make the Toyin Falola Reader into a ritual archive, illustrating his vision for African art as an inspirer of theory, by spacing powerful black and white pictures of forms of this art, mainly sculptural but also forms of Epistemic Roots, Universal Routes and Ontological Roofs 317 clothing, largely Yoruba but also including examples from other African cultures, throughout the book. Except for the set of images in the appendix, these artistic works are not identified, nor does the identification of those in the appendix go beyond naming them, exclusions perhaps motivated by the need to avoid expanding an already unusually big book of about 1,032 pages of central text. I reproduce and identify a number of these artistic forms and briefly elaborate on their aesthetic force and ideational power, clarifying the theoretical formations in which they are embedded and exploring the insights they could contribute to theory beyond their originating cultures. “Ritual Archives” is particularly important for me because it elucidates views strategic to my own cognitive explorations and way of life but which I have not been able to articulate with the ideational comprehensiveness and analytical penetration Falola brings to the subject of developing theory from endogenous African cultural expressions, exemplified by Ifá and art, two of my favorite subjects

Willing and Able? The Screening and Adoption of Habitual Family Venture Opportunities

This article develops a two-part theoretical framework synthesizing the socioemotional wealth (SEW) perspective with image theory to explain the ways in which family decision makers screen and potentially adopt habitual new venture opportunities. The model theorizes that opportunities are initially screened according to their ability to preserve SEW and fit with the family’s value images and subsequently explains how SEW willingness interacts with the family entrepreneur’s trajectory and strategic images to predict whether the venture will be pursued as a serial or portfolio opportunity. Theoretical implications and directions for future research are also discussed.

Transitivity and youth violence in #EndSARS discourse

, Florence O. Orabueze2 & Violence in Nigeria has reached its peak such that policies that should engage the youths positively are inevitable. This paper aims to establish that Nigerian youths should not be held accountable for #EndSARS protest. Using Halliday and Matthiessen’s Transitivity model, the paper examined the transitivity processes of the major participants in the discourse, and the circumstances implicated. Explication of images appropriated as discursive strategies were accounted for through insights from Kress and van Leeuwen’s Compositional Metafunction in Reading Image Theory. The analysis was done using a descriptive qualitative research design that supports the description of processes attributed to participants, and how social predictors that assign agentive roles to some participants as Actor, or Sayer; and stripe others of their agencies suggest that in the Nigeria’s social context, the #EndSARS protest was inevitable. Such approach was critical in exposing the undercurrents that informed the protest, which previous researches had paid insignificant attention to. From the analysis, several discoveries were recorded, namely: Nigerian government is majorly, a Sayer interested mainly in protecting its pride; the police, and the military are the Actors, while the youths are the Goal in material processes, and behaver in behavioural processes. The paper concludes that the volatility of the youths was a reaction to the processes of the government, and its agencies. The paper, therefore, recommends that government should show practical interest in the plight of the masses by initiating policies that target to engage them constructively so as to prevent future re-occurrence.

Pengembangan Konsep Desain Citra Kawasan Eduwisata Herbal di Kota Batu

ABSTRACT The village community needs the development of alternative designs that are suitable for the Herbal Education area in Batu City for the progress of Indonesia. The activities' strategy is planning an alternative design concept for the Batu City Herbal Education Area. This community service has theoretical benefits that add insight and knowledge about determining educational tours' location with various approaches. In practical terms, several added values are useful for providing input to officials and policymakers for Batu City tourism development, specifically in developing tourism with the concept of education through city image theory. This activity's impact is a good effect of these activities, especially landmarks that function optimally in building the area's image for visitors/observers in the development of the herbal education area of Batu City. More than that, it can also provide an impression/experience to visitors/observers regarding the state of the Batu City herbal education area. Also, to support in comparing the herbal education area of Batu city.

Facing a ‘civilisational choice’: Images of Europe by the populist radical right in the 2019 European elections

This paper deals with the perceptions of Europe as developed by the European populist radical right over the campaign for the 2019 European Parliament elections. The study is based on the public communications of three leading political parties in this spectrum: France’s Rassemblement national, Italy’s Lega and Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland. By applying image theory in international relations, the paper comes to the conclusion that the radical right managed to construct a relatively coherent image of the EU as a distant undemocratic actor in sharp contrast to the alternative narrative of one ‘Europe of fatherlands’ described in mostly civilisational terms.