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- Convenors:
-
Olukayode Eesuola
(Institute of African and Diaspora Studies, University of Lagos)
Muyiwa Falaiye (University of Lagos)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Location-based African Studies: Discrepancies and Debates
- Location:
- S44 (RWII)
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 2 October, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
This panel invites papers that discuss the different location-based approaches, traditions and sub traditions of Ifa studies that add values to the contemporary world, and how Ifa Studies itself can be reconfigured based on these, as part of Reconfiguration of African Studies.
Long Abstract:
This panel will invite papers to discuss the approach, tradition and sub traditions of Ifa studies that have the most capability of adding significant values to socio-political, economic, scientific and technological discourses in the contemporary world. Though generally viewed as a critical aspect of African Indigenous Knowledge System, Ifa has different dominant interpretations, traditions and sub traditions across different geographical locations around the world. These differences sometimes appear as discrepancies, and they continue to generate debates over the 'proper' Ifa conceptualizations and study approaches that have greatest potentials for contemporary global discourses. 'Is Ifa a religion, a divination or a thought system' remains, for instance, one dominant controversy that keeps reverberating across different geographical locations where Ifa is practised. Other controversies include the standard chronology of the 256 odu Ifa, appropriateness of basic totemic items, as well as recitations and narrations of the odu. All these differ from Benin Republic to Nigeria, other countries of ECOWAS, South and North America. Amongst the Yoruba of Nigeria alone, Ifa traditions of Ife, Oyo and Ekiti have some differences that can produce discrepancies in divinations, interpretations and thought systems. In line with all these, how is Ifa Studies reconfigured as a a part of the greater theme of reconfiguring African Studies in such a way that gives it contemporary values around the world?
Accepted paper:
Session 1 Wednesday 2 October, 2024, -Paper short abstract:
There are epistemological issues involved in Afa/Ifa divination, which necessitate that Afa/Ifa divination should be subjected into critical investigation using the tools of hermeneutic phenomenology and K .R. Popper’s falsifiability theory.
Paper long abstract:
There are epistemological issues involved in Afa/Ifa divination. One of such issues is the problem of epistemological certainty which further border on the question whether Afa/Ifa divination is fallible or infallible. Afa/Ifa divination is a hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry of how the life-forces of entities is harmonized with the universal life-force in the lifeworld. Lifeworld in this instance, refers to human existence in relation to the cosmic environment. From the purview of Afa/Ifa hermeneutic phenomenology or the phenomenology of life-force, the lifeworld is said to be controlled by plenum of forces. If the world of the multiplicity of forces is said to be constantly in mutation, the problem that ensues concerns how epistemological certitude can be attained in such a world? In response to the foregoing question, Karl Raimund Popper’s falsifiability theory would be used to peruse Afa/Ifa divination within Igbo/Yoruba cultural hermeneutics to decipher if such hermeneutic inquiry involves the processes of subjectivity, inter-subjectivity, intentionality, eidetic reduction and a transition from the lebenswelt to a transcendental state of phenomenological standpoint. This apart, does such system of hermeneutic inquiry entail a presuppositionless appraisal of issues meant to support scientific investigation or is it meant to reveal existential conditions of entities with a view to reintegrating them into the cosmic order? Lastly, can Afa/Ifa divination be made to be scientific? These pertinent questions shall be answered in this essay.
Keywords: Afa/Ifa divination, epistemological certitude, epistemological inquiry, hermeneutics,
phenomenology of life-force.