Drinking from the Cosmic Gourd

B. Nyamnjoh

Description

This book questions colonial and apartheid ideologies on being human and being African, ideologies that continue to shape how research is conceptualised, taught and practiced in universities across Africa. Africans immersed in popular traditions of meaning-making are denied the right, by those who police the borders of knowledge, to think and represent their realities in accordance with the civilisations and universes they know best. Often, the ways of life they cherish are labelled and dismissed too eagerly as traditional knowledge by some of the very African intellectual elite they look to for protection. The book makes a case for sidestepped traditions of knowledge. It draws attention to Africa�s possibilities, prospects and emergent capacities for being and becoming in tune with its creativity and imagination. It speaks to the nimble-footed flexible-minded �frontier African� at the crossroads and junctions of encounters, facilitating creative conversations and challenging regressive logics of exclusionary identities. The book uses Amos Tutuola�s stories to question dualistic assumptions about reality and scholarship, and to call for conviviality, interconnections and interdependence between competing knowledge traditions in Africa.

Sujets

• African Studies

Informations

• Publié par: Langaa RPCIG
• Date de parution: 15 mars 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9789956764433
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Publisher:
Langaa RPCIG
Langaa Research & Publishing Common Initiative Group
P.O. Box 902 Mankon
Bamenda
North West Region
Cameroon
[e-mail]
www.langaa-rpcig.net
Distributed in and outside N. America by African Books Collective [e-mail]
www.africanbookscollective.com
ISBN-10: 9956-764-65-5
ISBN-13: 978-9956-764-65-5
© Francis B. Nyamnjoh 2017
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher
Praise for this Book
"Twenty years after his death, valued by some scholars and writers but discounted by others, Amos Tutuola here finds a compelling advocate. Nyamnjoh reveals a voice that both embraces a range of African communal experience beyond ‘lettered’ reach and challenges commonplace aesthetic and philosophical constructs of African knowledge. And he shows why Tutuola matters, in his own time and now." Milton Krieger, Emeritus Professor, Western Washington University, USA
"Francis Nyamnjoh invites us to rethink contemporary cosmopolitanism through strange encounters and marvellous episodes recounted in the stories of Amos Tutuola, a mid-twentieth century Nigerian Yoruba author. This might seem an endeavour more implausible than the tales themselves, but reading will change your mind." Richard Fardon, Professor of West African Anthropology, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, UK
"Francis Nyamnjoh’s book argues that Tutuola’s work provides a theoretical tool kit for conceptualising and understanding what it means to be African at the contemporary moment. Tutuola’s tales of frontiers, of incompleteness, of crossroads and conviviality advance profound epistemological perspectives on being and knowledge that we will do well to acknowledge. Nyamnjoh positions Tutuola as a vernacular theorist whose narratives are a fount of hermeneutical and epistemological insight. Much is often made of the idea of vernacular theory but this book is an exemplary instance of putting that idea into practice." Harry Garuba, poet and scholar, University of Cape Town
"The book is an important contribution to African intellectual history. It offers a fresh and original interpretation of the life and work of Amos Tutuola, but at the same time marks a substantial advance in the ongoing epistemological debates on the study of Africa. Moving beyond the restrictions of the Eurocentric/anti-colonial dichotomy, Nyamnjoh presents a more creative alternative for an African epistemology. Based on his concept of the incompleteness of human existence, he opts for an inclusive, dialogical and interdisciplinary approach. Of special interest is the way in which he relates ethnography to fiction and his focus on the real life experiences of ordinary people. This is a seminal work which no doubt will have a significant impact on current epistemological thinking." Professor Bernard Lategan, Founding Director, Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS)
"Weaving varied ethnographic accounts together with richly textured historical perspectives, Nyamnjoh traces and rehabilitates the checkered career of an unusual and often controversial literary icon." Sanya Osha, author of A f rican Postcolonial Modernity: Informal Subjectivities and the Democratic Consensus
About the Book
In this book, Amos Tutuola’s unusual writing style firmly rooted in African storytelling is used to refute the common misconception that there is only one type of scholarship and set of experiences worth writing about. The issues faced by African intellectuals and scholarship who seem to have to abandon their African identities in search for international recognition at the expense of local relevance by reiterating dominant colonialist scopes of knowledge are explored. This is especially relevant in light of the wave of protests at universities all over South Africa where students demanded the "fall" of Eurocentric education standards, calling for a more Afrocentric curriculum, more grounded in African traditions and experiences, and thus more relatable to the African students in the ivory towers of Africa.
The idea of the West as the centre of knowledge and civilisation is challenged by pointing out that this number one status achieved was only possible by borrowing bits and pieces from all over. Rather than just a simple dismissal of Western ideals, an alternative to these Eurocentric dualisms is offered – an acquiescence of incompleteness as a way of being. A number of stories from Tutuola’s works are used to illustrate the importance of conviviality. We are urged to accept that one’s independence will always be thwarted by one’s dependency on others and to see debt and indebtedness as a normal way of being human though relationships with others.
Acknowledgements
Writing this book has been a questing journey of many enriching encounters. I would like to express my most sincere gratitude to all those who in one way or another contributed with humbling generosity their ideas, insights, time, suggestions, and intellectual and related energies to kindle and rekindle my efforts in putting together this book on African epistemologies of incompleteness and conviviality inspired by Tutuola and the cosmologies of his existence and creative imagination.
Of special mention are all those who read and commented various drafts and sections of this book, pointing me as they did to sources and resources for further enrichment of my argument and its substantiation. These include, in alphabetical order, Richard Fardon, Ntonghanwah Forcheh, Divine Fuh, Malizani Jimu, Milton Krieger, Bernard Lategan, Ayanda Manqoyi, Louis Herns Marcelin, Motoji Matsuda, Dirk Moons, Artwell Nhemachena, Anye- Nkwenti Nyamnjoh, Sue Bih Nyamnjoh, Itaru Ohta, Elsemi Olwage, Sanya Osha, Michael Rowlands, Nanna Schneidermann, Kathryn Toure, Jean-Pierre Warnier, Joanna Woods, and Wafule Yenjela. They include as well, the reviewers for Journal of Asian and African Studies and Stichproben. Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien , which respectively published "Incompleteness: Frontier Africa and the Currency of Conviviality" and "Amos Tutuola and the Elusiveness of Completeness," essays which highlight some of the ideas developed in this book. I acknowledge the opportunity to present and discuss aspects of my thoughts on Amos Tutuola at graduate conferences and doctoral seminars at the University of KwaZulu Natal, Stellenbosch University and UNISA in South Africa, and at Kenyatta University in Kenya. I cherish my Japanese editions of The Palm-Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts , a special gift from Itaru Ohta, and I look forward to reading them the day I acquire the juju to activate my competency in Japanese.
I am most grateful for three fellowships, one from the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (April – June 2015), a second from the Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies of Kyoto University (June – July 2015), and a third from the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency Program (25 August – 22 September 2016), which fellowships enabled me to write sections of the book. I benefitted enormously from the generosity, both intellectual and social, of fellows and staff of the three institutions. I am in their debt. I am also grateful to Steve Howard and his colleagues of Ohio University, for a visiting scholarship (August – September 2015), which enabled me to develop some of the themes in this book.
Special thanks go to Richard Fardon who generously agreed to do the Foreword, and to Harry Garuba, Milton Krieger, Bernard Lategan and Sanya Osha for their commendations. I acknowledge with profound gratitude the editorial contributions of Kathryn Toure. I am equally indebted to Manya van Ryneveld and Sue Bih Nyamnjoh for assistance with proofreading.
Last but not least, my sincere gratitude flows out to all the palm-wine tapsters and drinkards of Africa and the worlds beyond.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword
by Richard Fardon
Chapter 1: A Preview
Chapter 2: Dominant and Dormant Epistemologies of Africa
Chapter 3: Tutuola and the Extravagant Illusion of Completeness
Chapter 4: Keeping Alive Popular Ideas of Reality
Chapter 5: The Palm-Wine Drinkard and the Challenge of Dichotomies
Chapter 6: Activation, Potency and Efficacy in Tutuola’s Universe
Chapter 7: Tutuola in Conversation with the Cameroon Grassfields and Beyond
Chapter 8: Conclusion: Tutuola’s Legacy
References
Foreword
I am unsure which tense past, present or future best addresses the discerning reader you must be. You will soon find, if you don’t already know, that Francis Nyamnjoh is not a thinker who marches in straight lines or turns at right angles; he prefers to explore meandering bush paths where a traveller might encounter strange companions and other wonders. Perhaps you read similarly and so are coming to this Foreword finally, or not at all (in which case my choice of tense won’t matter). But let me assume that you are holding a book you have yet to read and are wondering what awaits you. I can tell you it will be an expansive and inclusive read; we are all addressed, wherever or however we find ourselves.
Francis has taken a companion on this intellectual journey which is for him both a setting forth and looking back. The Yor