Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
Rowland Abiodun's
Yoruba Art and Language
Seeking the African in African Art
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Compcros
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art in Relation
to Yoruba, African and Non-African Philosophies and Art
Rowland Abiodun has arrived at last.
The world is privileged to receive the magnificent production represented by his
book Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art, published by
Cambridge University Press on 13th November, 2014. ISBN: 9781107047440.
Hardback. 75.00.(US$115.00).
From decades of scholarship and a lifetime of immersion in the subject, Rowland
Abiodun has put together a comprehensive statement on his research into the
intersection of aesthetics, epistemology, metaphysics and ethics in classical
Yoruba art and thought.
The book is beautifully bound and richly illustrated, its form a sumptuous
delight.
It magnificently complements, and with reference to some of its ideas, takes
forward the developments represented by landmark publications on Yoruba
arts, Yoruba : Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought, The Yoruba Artist : New
Theoretical Perspectives on African Arts and Yoruba Oral Tradition as well as
decades of studies in the field of Yoruba arts, by Abiodun himself, Babatunde
Lawal, Henry John Drewal, Margaret Thompson Drewal, Olabiyi Babalola Yai,
John Pemberton III, among others, scholarship that has made Yoruba aesthetics
perhaps the best studied body of aesthetics in classical African philosophy.
The book demonstrates conclusively that Yoruba philosophy has reached a point
of explication in English that enables it stand on its own as a resource for
addressing a broad range of philosophical questions.
One may explore any phenomenon, concrete or abstract, artistic or social, from
any context, through reflection on central concepts in Yoruba philosophy.
Yoruba philosophy also provides a platform for interaction with cognate
philosophies in order to expand the ideational and practical scope shared by
these constructs.
Such philosophies include Igbo philosophy, which, according to Annechukwu
Umeh in After God is Dibia : Igbo Cosmology, Healing, Divination & Sacred Science
in Nigeria also demonstrates an emphasis on the power of visuality similar to the
difference and complementarity represented by the Yoruba concepts oju lasan
and oju inu, and in terms of Achebe's description of ike in "The Igbo World and its
Art", also involves a recognition of a creative power like the Yoruba ase.
Similar ideas of cosmic energy emerge in other African cultures, as summed up
by John Mbiti in African Religions and Philosophy and which may be traced to
discussions of particular civilizations, as in the nyama concept of the Mande,
described by Margit Cronmueller Smith as " a cosmic principle, present in
human beings, animals, plants, and things... a sacred quality that can be affected
by the word [ of particular specialists, such as artists of Kora music] in "The
Mande Kora : A West African System of Thought", this correlation between
cosmic force and the artistic use of language as a means of cultivating and
directing this power being also evident in the Yoruba concept of ase as described
by Abiodun in Ase : Verbalising and Visualizing Creative Power through Art
and in other works.
Related ideas are also evident in non-African contexts, such as the Chinese
concept of chi, as presented by Paul Wildish in Big Book of Chi: An Exploration of
Energy, Form and Spirit, the Indian Shakti as described in Pandit Rajmani
Tigunait's Shakti : The Power in Tantra and the Indian concept of the sacred
word, Vac, as explored by Andre Padoux in Vac : The Concept of the Word in
Selected Hindu Tantras.
Abiodun's discussion of visuality in Yoruba aesthetics is conducted within the
context of epistemology, metaphysics and ethics as developed in Yoruba
civilization.
It is complemented by the work of other scholars, such as Babatunde Lawal's
summation of the cognitive continuum of visuality in Yoruba thought in his
"wrn: Representing the Self and its Metaphysical Other in Yoruba Art",
providing a platform for engaging with other philosophies in relation to the role
of visuality, in particular, and embodiment, in general, in human cognition.
These include the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle's grounding, in the
Metaphysics, of metaphysical inquiry in sensory perception, of which sight is preeminent, Indian Tantric epistemology which understands the senses as enablers
of insight into the ground of being, and the Western theory of embodied
cognition represented by George Lakoff, who analyses language as
demonstrating the shaping of human cognition by embodiment.
As understood in the correlative Aristotelian and Tantric formulations, this
sensory foundation may be used as a platform for exploring the idea of moving
from sensory perception of the multiplicity of phenomena to a grasp of their
unifying qualities as these demonstrate the essential character of being, the
quest for essential identity, iwa in Yoruba, being also a central goal of Yoruba
philosophy.
Yoruba philosophy, as represented by this book, also takes the reader beyond
ratiocinative philosophy, philosophy based on reasoning, and even beyond
philosophy that foregrounds the conventionally understood range of human
cognition in terms of the senses, emotion and imagination.
Yoruba philosophy facilitates exploration of human creative capacities and of
the character of nature as demonstrating possibilities beyond conventional
With the aid Abiodun's book, taking his sophisticated research and profound and
clear expositions beyond the limitations of academic journals to the more public
sphere of book publication, print and electronic, one is powerfully enabled to
engage with Yoruba philosophy of art in the conversation between discourses.
Rowland Abiodun
John C. Newton Professor of the History of Art and Black Studies
Amherst College
Amherst MA
8