Incompleteness Mobility and Conviviality

Francis Nyamnjoh

Description

Central to the Jensen Memorial Lectures 2023 is an invitation to take incompleteness seriously in how we imagine, relate to and seek to understand a world in perpetual motion. Despite our instinct for and obsession with completeness, we are constantly reminded that the sooner one recognises and provides for incompleteness and the conviviality it inspires as the normal way of being, the better we are for it. Fluidity, compositeness and the capacity to be present in multiple places and forms simultaneously in whole or in fragments are core characteristics of reality and ontology of incompleteness. How would we frame our curiosities and conversations about processes, relationships and phenomena with an understanding of the universality of incompleteness and mobility? West and Central Africa, for example, are regions where it is commonplace to embrace and celebrate incompleteness in nature, the suprasensory, human beings, human actions, human inventions and human achievements. The lectures indicate how we could draw inspiration in this regard to inform current clamours for decolonisation and the growing ambivalence about rapid advances in digital technologies (artificial intelligence (AI) in particular), as well as with twenty-first century concerns about migrants and strangers knocking at the doors of opportunities we feel more entitled to as bona fide citizens and insiders. The lectures draw on the writings of Amos Tutuola as well as from popular ideas of personhood and agency in Africa, to make a case for sidestepped and silenced traditions of knowledge. They highlight Africa’s possibilities, prospects and emergent capacities for being and becoming in tune with the continent’s creativity and imagination. They speak to the nimble-footed flexible-minded frontier African at the crossroads and junctions of myriad encounters, facilitating creative conversations and challenging regressive logics of exclusionary claims and articulation of identities and achievements. The traditions of knowledge discussed in these lectures do not only speak to Africans, but to the world, as the philosophies explored have universal application. 
“The crucial anthropological question of relationality and othering is at the heart of this original and enlightening book. Nyamnjoh cautions the missionaries of decoloniality against the risk of substituting one illusion of completeness with another. For him, incompleteness is the basis of any healthy exchange. He therefore recommends embracing the universality of incompleteness in motion and taking seriously an ancestral tradition of self-extension through creative imagination in this anxious age of artificial intelligence. Forcefully argued and abundantly substantiated – with finesse and laughter that run through it – this book will be a milestone by making us rediscover the demands and the magic of fieldwork.” 
Prof. Dr. Mamadou Diawara, Goethe University, Frankfurt/Main Frobenius-Institut, Frankfurt/Main Point Sud, Bamako, Mali

Sujets

• African Studies
• Ethnic Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: Langaa RPCIG
• Date de parution: 05 décembre 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789956554843
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Incompleteness Mobility and Conviviality: Ad. E. Jensen Memorial Lectures 2023 Frobenius-Institut Goethe-University Francis B. Nyamnjoh

L a ng a a R esea rch & P u blishing CIG Mankon, Bamenda

Publisher: LangaaRPCIG 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

e-ISBN: 978-9956-554-84-3

©Francis B. Nyamnjoh 2024

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

Dedication To Amos Tutuola, a great and unassuming inspiration.

Acknowledgements On July 5 2022, I received an email from Prof. Dr. Roland Hardenberg, Director of the Frobenius-Institut for Research in Cultural Anthropology at Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, to sound me out on my availability to deliver “the prestigious Ad. E. Jensen Memorial Lectures, for which the Frobenius-Institut invites renowned researchers from the international research community every year”. The invitation was for June 2023, and for the second time, the Frobenius- Institut planned “to combine this lectureship with a fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Bad Homburg, which is only a few kilometres away from Frankfurt.” I did not hesitate to accept the invitation, which I saw as a great honour. An additional reason was the prospect of spending a month in the company of Prof. Mamadou Diawara, who is based at the Frobenius-Institut and whose work and scholarly networking initiatives through the Bamako-based Point Sud Centre for Research on Local Knowledge I have admired over the years. The lecture series was framed around the overarching theme of: “Incompleteness, Mobility and Conviviality” and consisted of the following: “Decolonisation: Incompleteness and Convivial Scholarship”; “Representing Diasporas as Incompleteness in Motion”; “ICTs asJuju: African Inspirations”; “Citizenship, Incompleteness and Mobility: Amos Tutuola’s ‘The Complete Gentleman’ and ‘the Bush of Ghosts’”; delivered on June 5, 12, 19 and 26, respectively. In addition to the lectures, I also held a masterclass on June 29, during which the participating young researchers presented and discussed their work with me on the theme of “Incompleteness and mobility, reflexivity and anthropology”. Over the years, I have accumulated an enormous debt and indebtedness in my reflections, research and writing on incompleteness, mobility and conviviality that I have an eternal duty to acknowledge and be humbled by. As the dedication page of this book indicates, Amos Tutuola and his works have been and remain a great inspiration on the humility and possibilities of incompleteness. In preparing, presenting, revising and updating these Jensen Memorial Lectures for publication, I have benefitted immensely from

others’ critical remarks, suggestions and contributions. I am genuinely indebted to everyone who knowingly and unknowingly contributed to these lectures. As with my previous books, Tekletsadik Belachew and Mohammed Umar have been indefatigable in their ability to ferret and generously share relevant material with me. They both deserve immeasurable thanks. The following, by no means exhaustive, are acknowledged for reading and commenting on some or all of the lectures, and in no particular order: Aghi Bahi, Susan Levine, Jantina de Vries, Lauren Paremoer, Sophie Oldfield, Artwell Nhemachena, Fiona Ross, Rekopantswe Mate, Antonadia Borges, Edmond Agyeman Akwasi, Hassan Mbiydzenyuy Yosimbom, Ingrid Botes, Sanya Osha, Billan Omar, Aïssé Touré, Henrietta Nyamnjoh, Kharnita Mohammed, Leah Junck, Thelma Nyarhi, Matsuri Nakamura, Anye Nkwenti Nyamnjoh, Walter Nkwi, Primus Tazanu, Ayanda Manqoyi, Sue Bih Nyamnjoh, Kiyoshi Umeya, Ute Röschenthaler, Divine Fuh, Kamari Clarke, Roland Hardenberg, Sophia Thubauville, Susanne Fehlings, Holger Jebens, Mamadou Diawara, Ferdinand Sutterlüty, Matsuri Nakamura, Moshumee T. Dewoo, Édith Félicité Koumtoudji, Ntsewah F. Angwafo III, Winston Mano and Charles Prempeh. I acknowledge with profound gratitude the editorial contributions of Kathryn Toure, Lucien Mufor Atanga, Rae Dalton and Tanya Barben, who, in addition, generated the index. I am equally profoundly appreciative of those whose ideas and with whom conversations over the years have inspired and deepened my sense of incompleteness, mobility and conviviality, and how we should go about using the ideas as a framework for relating, researching and being. There are too many to enumerate. But there are some examples – my teachers: Bernard Fonlon, Jean-Marc Ela, Jean-Pierre Warnier and James Halloran, as well as intimate long-term collaborators: Michael Rowlands, Piet Konings, Peter Geschiere, Richard Fardon, Milton Krieger, Harri Englund, Mirjam de Bruijn, Inge Brinkman, Pradip Thomas, Steve Howard, Herman Wasserman, Ghirmai Negash, Pierre Englebert, Audrey Gadzekpo, Yaw Ofosu-Kusi, Itaru Ohta, Motoji Matsuda, Esei Kurimoto, Kiyoshi Umeya, Noriko Tahara, Joel Carpenter, Faye Harrison, Bernard Lategan, Edward Kirumira and Christoff Pauw; and my students and

colleagues at the various universities, networks and research institutions where I have been affiliated. I cannot acknowledge my debt of gratitude enough for growing up in the Cameroon Grassfields in the 1960s and 1970s which was in many ways a paradise of opportunities to fathom in belief, experience, tradition, relationships and processes both the lure and elusiveness of completeness, and the pressures, thrills and frustrations of incompleteness and conviviality. I am profoundly grateful for a Wellcome Trust funded project as part of our conversations on convivial scholarship based at the Ethics Lab at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town. Jointly coordinated by Jantina de Vries and me, the project, titled: “Incompleteness and the ethics of new and emerging health technologies: fostering African conversations on relational ontology, epistemic justice and academic activism”, brings together scholars, researchers and practitioners in the health sciences, the social sciences and humanities in and of Africa to think, write, publish and network on the challenges, possibilities and ethics of being human at the confluence of biology, neuroscience, culture, politics, economics, technology and the market. I thank everyone who attended and discussed my Jensen Lectures at the Casino-Gebäude, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. I profoundly appreciate the hospitality, conversations and insights I benefited from during my June 2023 fellowship at theForschungskolleg Humanwissenschaptenin Bad Homburg. The idea of combining the invitation to deliver the Jensen Lectures with a fellowship at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaptenexcellent. My is interactions with the Director, Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, Beate Sutterlüty of the Fellow Programme and Science Communication, the rest of the management team and staff, and the other fellows at theForschungskolleg Humanwissenschaptenwere very productive. To Bernadine Ngu-Nnoko, Ernest Nnoko, Chenyl and Eliora, our weekend in Bonn was filled with delights and love. Special thanks to Mamadou and Aïssé for making Henrietta and me feel abundantly at home in Frankfurt. And to Roland Hardenberg and Andrea Luithle-Hardenberg, Henrietta and I lack the words to express our depth of

gratitude for your friendship and for going beyond the call of duty to invite us to your home to meet Janik and Ravina and to get to know and exchange with your doctoral students in a most convivial atmosphere. The artwork on the cover brings together the gift of a sculpted head which I was presented by the Frobenius- Institut at the end of theJensen Memorial Lectures, and a wooden container at home in Cape Town. I am profoundly grateful toStaatliche Museum zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz for permission to use the sculpture.

Table of Contents Acknowledgements...........................................................................v Preface by Mamadou Diawara ......................................................xi Préface de Mamadou Diawara ....................................................xxi

Methodology.........................................................................................1 Incompleteness..................................................................................15 Lecture 1: Decolonisation: Incompleteness and Convivial Scholarship.......25 Lecture 2: Representing Diasporas as Incompleteness in Motion.......................................55 Lecture 3: ICTs as Juju : African Inspirations........................85 Lecture 4: Citizenship, Incompleteness and Mobility: Amos Tutuola’s “The Complete Gentleman” and “the Bush of Ghosts”.......................................183 Index:................................................................................................223

ix