Unshared Identity

Babajide Ololajulo

Description

Unshared Identity employs the practice of posthumous paternity in Ilupeju-Ekiti, a Yoruba-speaking community in Nigeria, to explore endogenous African ways of being and meaning-making that are believed to have declined when the Yoruba and other groups constituting present-day Nigeria were preyed upon by European colonialism and Westernisation. However, the author’s fieldwork for this book uncovered evidence of the resilience of Africa’s endogenous epistemologies.
Drawing on a range of disciplines, from anthropology to literature, the author lays bare the hypocrisy underlying the ways in which dominant Western ideals of being and belonging are globalised or proliferated, while those that are unorthodox or non-Western (Yoruba and African in this case) are pathologised, subordinated and perceived as repugnant. At a time when the issues of decolonisation and African epistemologies are topical across the African continent, this book is a timely contribution to the potential revival of those values and practices that make Africans African.

Informations

• Publié par: NISC (Pty) Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 décembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781920033330
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Dedication
To Tunde Agbaje-Williams; my link to Anthropology
About the Series
The African Humanities Series is a partnership between the African Humanities Program (AHP) of the American Council of Learned Societies and academic publishers NISC (Pty) Ltd. The Series covers topics in African histories, languages, literatures, philosophies, politics and cultures. Submissions are solicited from Fellows of the AHP, which is administered by the American Council of Learned Societies and financially supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
The purpose of the AHP is to encourage and enable the production of new knowledge by Africans in the five countries designated by the Carnegie Corporation: Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. AHP fellowships support one year’s work free from teaching and other responsibilities to allow the Fellow to complete the project proposed. Eligibility for the fellowship in the five countries is by domicile, not nationality.
Book proposals are submitted to the AHP editorial board which manages the peer review process and selects manuscripts for publication by NISC. In some cases, the AHP board will commission a manuscript mentor to undertake substantive editing and to work with the author on refining the final manuscript.
The African Humanities Series aims to publish works of the highest quality that will foreground the best research being done by emerging scholars in the five Carnegie designated countries. The rigorous selection process before the fellowship award, as well as AHP editorial vetting of manuscripts, assures attention to quality. Books in the series are intended to speak to scholars in Africa as well as in other areas of the world.
The AHP is also committed to providing a copy of each publication in the series to university libraries in Africa.
AHP Editorial Board Members as at November 2018
AHP Series Editors:
Professor Adigun Agbaje, University of Ibadan, Nigeria
Professor Emeritus Fred Hendricks, Rhodes University, South Africa
Consultant:
Professor Emeritus Sandra Barnes, University of Pennsylvania, USA (Anthropology)
Board Members:
1 Professor Akosua Adomako Ampofo, Institute of African Studies, Ghana (Gender Studies & Advocacy) (Vice President, African Studies Association of Africa)
2 Professor Kofi Anyidoho, University of Ghana, Ghana (African Studies & Literature) (Director, Codesria African Humanities Institute Program)
3 Professor Ibrahim Bello-Kano, Bayero University, Nigeria (Dept of English and French Studies)
4 Professor Sati Fwatshak, University of Jos, Nigeria (Dept of History & International Studies)
5 Professor Patricia Hayes, University of the Western Cape, South Africa (African History, Gender Studies and Visuality) (SARChI Chair in Visual History and Theory)
6 Associate Professor Wilfred Lajul, College of Humanities & Social Sciences, Makerere University, Uganda (Dept of Philosophy)
7 Professor Yusufu Lawi, University of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania (Dept of History)
8 Professor Bertram Mapunda, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (Dept of Archaeology & Heritage Studies)
9 Professor Innocent Pikirayi, University of Pretoria, South Africa (Chair & Head, Dept of Anthropology & Archaeology)
10 Professor Josephat Rugemalira, University of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania (Dept of Foreign Languages & Linguistics)
11 Professor Idayat Bola Udegbe, University of Ibadan, Nigeria (Dept of Psychology)
Published in this series

Dominica Dipio, Gender terrains in African cinema , 2014
Ayo Adeduntan, What the forest told me: Yoruba hunter, culture and narrative performance, 2014
Sule E. Egya, Nation, power and dissidence in third-generation Nigerian poetry in English , 2014
Irikidzayi Manase, White narratives: The depiction of post-2000 land invasions in Zimbabwe , 2016
Sylvia Bruinders, Parading Respectability: The Cultural and Moral Aesthetics of the Christmas Bands Movement in the Western Cape, South Africa , 2017
Michael Andindilile, The Anglophone Literary-Linguistic Continuum: English and Indigenous Languages in African Literary Discourse , 2018
Jeremiah Arowosegbe, Claude E Ake: the making of an organic intellectual, 2018 Romanus Aboh, Language and the Construction of Multiple Identities in the Nigerian Novel , 2018
Bernard Matolino, Consensus as Democracy in Africa , 2018

Published in South Africa on behalf of the African Humanities Program by NISC (Pty) Ltd, PO Box 377, Grahamstown, 6140, South Africa www.nisc.co.za
First edition, first impression 2018
Publication © African Humanities Program 2018 Text © Babajide Ololajulo 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-920033-28-6 (print)
Manuscript mentor: Francis Nyamnjoh
Project manager: Peter Lague
Indexer: Michel Cozien
Cover design: Advanced Design Group
Cover photograph: ©Cindy Hopkins / Alamy Stock Photo
Printed in South Africa by Digital Action

The author and the publisher have made every effort to obtain permission for and acknowledge the use of copyright material. Should an inadvertent infringement of copyright have occurred, please contact the publisher and we will rectify omissions or errors in any subsequent reprint or edition.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Preface
C HAPTER 1 Yoruba interconnections, colonial encounters, and epistemological crises
Interconnections in the Yoruba epistemologies
The dynamics of ‘unequal encounters’
Posthumous paternity, levirate and widow inheritance
Between identity and identification
Organisation of this book
Notes
C HAPTER 2 The fated grass: Self-representation and identity construction
(Un)veiling the posthumous offspring
Being ‘born from another man’s hands’
Ethnographic vignettes: Posthumous offspring and self-presentation
Picking up the pieces of a broken self
Notes
C HAPTER 3 Posthumous offspring and the politics of legitimacy
Borders of legitimacy
Legitimacy and the identity of power
Posthumous paternity: Where the church stands
Notes
C HAPTER 4 Endogenous values, spatial delineation and cultural authenticity
Posthumous paternity and Yoruba cultural authenticity
Levirate or widow inheritance
Revisiting the Yoruba concept of (il)legitimacy
Notes
C HAPTER 5 Neo-repugnancy: Assisted reproduction as an obscenity
When innovation is negotiated
Children made by doctors
Two faces/phases of the repugnancy doctrine
Help, donation, and making women pregnant
‘ART’ and the cultural construction of adultery
Notes
C HAPTER 6 Beyond ‘epistemicide’: Reclaiming humanity for Africa
B IBLIOGRAPHY
I NDEX
Acknowledgements
I owe a debt of gratitude to many individuals and groups for the successful completion of this book. I wish to thank the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the African Humanities Program (AHP) for the generous grant that enabled me to conduct the research upon which this book is based, and for funding this publication. I am particularly indebted to the Director of International Programmes at ACLS, Andrzje Tymowski, and AHP mentors, Adigun Agbaje, Frederick Hendricks, Bertram Mapunda and Kwesi Yankah for having faith in this work, and for the lively conversations we had at the AHP manuscript development workshop held at the Humura Resort, Kampala, Uganda in June 2015. I also thank my co-participants at the Kampala workshop, Edem Adotey, Pamela Khanakwa, Bernard Matolino, Jacinta Nwaka, Henri Oripeloye, Jean-Baptiste Sourou and Amanda Tumusiime for their insightful comments on my work. My sincere appreciation goes to Barbara van der Merwe of the AHP Secretariat in South Africa for keeping me on my toes throughout the period of preparing the book manuscript.
I am grateful to Francis Nyamnjoh, the development editor AHP appointed to guide the revision of my manuscript, for providing theoretical insights and relevant literature that helped shape the arguments in this book. Indeed, his intervention led to the emergence of an almost new manuscript altogether. I thank my mentors,Tunde Agbaje-Williams, Tunde Lawuyi, Olawale Albert, Omolade Adunbi and Insa Nolte for their support and intellectual guidance. I also owe the programme committee of the Faculty of Arts, University of Ibadan, a debt of gratitude for the seminar that offered me the opportunity to present this work to colleagues and students. In this regard, I thank Adebola Ekanola, Philip Ogundeji, Olatunji Oyesile, Dele Adeyanju and my friends, Akin Odebunmi, Tunde Awosanmi, Doyin Odebowale, Rasheed Olaniyi, Nathaniel Danjibo and Ademola Faleti for their objective reviews and words of encouragements.
Many thanks to senior faculty members and colleagues at the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Ibadan: Caleb Folorunso, Philip Oyelaran, David Aremu, Samuel Ogundele, Olu Aleru, Raphael Alabi, Aderemi Ajala, Bolanle Tubosun, Segun Opadeji, Francesca Ukpokolo, Kayode Akinsete, Kolawole Adekola and Emuobosa Orijieme. The encouragement and support from them have been immense.
No book would have been written without the contributions of my informants whose privacy I respect by not mentioning them by name. I appreciate you all. My gratitude do