Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: ABIOLA IRELE FACEBOOK GROUP

Toyin,

The tradition of knowledge, which you made reference to, does not create a situation in which the creator is deified at the expense of the creation, which is exactly what groups created and named after famous persons do. The so called "primacy of human individuality" only serves to identify the creator, it does not eclipse the creation in the process. Your analogy is a bit far fetched. Happy New Year in advance anyway. Arugo Motor Park Owerri is bubbling with travelers and revelers. Na season we dey. 

CAO.

On Friday, 27 December 2013 20:50:38 UTC+1, tovadepoju wrote:

I have a question.

The tradition of knowledge  Chidi and Kenneth Harrow operate in is based on the primacy of human individuality.

How is this demonstrated?

You are both authors.

Your books boldly carry your names on the covers.

Why must you do that?

Why not insist on anonymous publication, if you want to focus on the ideas and eclipse  the idea maker, as Chidi is suggesting?

Why not practice that principle, Kenneth Harrow, if  you see the focus on the author, in the tradition that has become central in the concept of canonical figures in cognitive and cultural history,  as equivalent  to worshipping  people as  superior beings rather than focusing on ' ideas and writings as the central objects of study and inspiration'?

Ifa literature, the European Gothic cathedrals, the Hindu Upanishads, and a good number of the greatest works of humanity,  are presented in terms of the principle of anonymity, so it can be done.

Chidi has websites that boldly carry his name as author.

Kenneth Harrow's  site at his university carries his name.

Kenneth Harrow's  CV presents the entire trajectory of his distinctive work with phenomena over decades, a CV that is unique to him.

The CV presents how he and he alone has engaged with those phenomena, along with foregrounding  the most significant dates dates in his career.

The CV is not a presentation  of Kenneth Harrow's ideas but of his personal history in the world of ideas and the institutions where they are studied.

Central to scholarship on any cultural creator is the biographical relationship between persona and creation.

Thus, scholars study poetry and thought  as well as the lives of  poets and thinkers, demonstrating the interrelationship  of creator and creation.  

Gentlemen, how can you be deeply part of   a culture of individuality, a culture that foregrounds individual agency and personality in the creation and ascription  of knowledge and make the claims you are making?

Please help me out.

thanks

toyin 

On Fri, Dec 27, 2013 at 3:49 PM, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu> wrote:

hi chidi and toyin
i agree with your reservations, especially since soyinka is still alive! the trick is to honor him for his work, not worship him as a superior being. there must be a way to make that distinction and carry on with soyinka's ideas and writings as the central objects of study and inspiration.
ken

On 12/27/13 4:07 AM, Chidi Anthony Opara wrote:

Honestly Toyin, I have not seriously thought of alternative approaches. I will however favour approaches that do not allow the personality of the messenger to obscure the message. I detest personality cults.

CAO.

On Thursday, 26 December 2013 19:04:18 UTC+1, tovadepoju wrote:

i find this intriguing, Chidi

'to espouse the ideas these notable figures propagated'

can you suggest alternative approaches?

On Thu, Dec 26, 2013 at 5:19 PM, Chidi Anthony Opara <chidi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Toyin,

Don't you think that if we continue to establish groups like the "Wole Soyinka Society" yahoo group and this, we will just end up building personality cults? Do we have to establish these groups to be able to espouse the ideas these notable figures propagated?

CAO.

On Thursday, 26 December 2013 17:04:37 UTC+1, tovadepoju wrote:

If i might comment while awaiting your explanation, to the best of my knowledge, the question of the central forces behind history has  been contentious in philosophy and various world views.

One may describe  two contrastive poles in relation to this idea in terms of  the centrality of human agency and the contrastive idea of the centrality of transpersonal, non-human agents or principles, and a meditating position in terms of a dialogue between those two views.

From St. Augustine's pioneering City of God, to Hegel, Marx, Arnold Toynbee, Karl Popper and other thinkers, to various religions and world views, this question resonates, and may be described in terms of the basic ideational map I have presented.

thanks

toyin 

On Thu, Dec 26, 2013 at 3:54 PM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <tovad...@gmail.com> wrote:

Please clarify, Ibrahim

I would like to understand you better

On Thu, Dec 26, 2013 at 2:24 PM, Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdu...@gmail.com> wrote:

Do u really need to evoke Marx re the centrality of human agency in history? This is high school stuff not even HS 101.
---

On Dec 26, 2013 2:12 PM, "Oluwatoyin Adepoju" <tovad...@gmail.com> wrote:

An Irele sentence

'For if, as Karl Marx has observed (in The Holy Family), human beings are the real source of history and not an impersonal principle, it is the myriad forms of exchange and transactions between peoples and races, either in situations of conflict or, as is more often the case, as strategies of accommodation to each other, that have everywhere and over the ages determined the evolution of our world.'

A quintessential Irele paragraph, in the range of knowledge it is resting on, its evocation of vast possibilities, while remaining a precise expression of a specific idea or ideas, constitutes a research project. 

 http://aaas.osu.edu/events/distinguished-lecture-series-feat-professor-francis-abiola-irele-cultural-encounters-and-afri

Distinguished Lecture Series feat. Professor Francis Abiola Irele: "Cultural Encounters and the African Experience"

On Thu, Dec 26, 2013 at 1:17 PM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <tovad...@gmail.com> wrote:

Exploring Abiola Irele 

Abiola Irele is one of the great writers in all history.

His ideas resonate across cultures in time and space. 

Let us come together to study this great thinker and writer.

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