Arts of Being Yoruba , livre ebook

ARTS OF BEING YOR B
AFRICAN EXPRESSIVE CULTURES
Patrick McNaughton, editor
Associate editors
Catherine M. Cole
Barbara G. Hoffman
Eileen Julien
Kassim Kon
D. A. Masolo
Elisha Renne
Z. S. Strother
ARTS OF BEING YOR B
Divination, Allegory, Tragedy, Proverb, Panegyric
Ad l k Ad k
Indiana University Press
Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2017 by Ad l k Ad k
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
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Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
1 2 3 4 5 22 21 20 19 18 17
for
T w Francisca Ab s y g nk y Ad k Catholic, b d n, j b , Nigerian, American; An Eminently Practical Yor b
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Writing and Reference in If Divination Chants
2 Culture, Meaning, Proverbs (For Oyekan Owomoyela, in Memoriam)
3 Reading, Writing, and Epistemic Instability in F g nw s Novels
4 Sex, Gender, and Plot in F g nw s Adventures
5 Ak nw m l s f n et n An w r and Yor b Woman-Being
6 Photography and the Panegyric in Contemporary Yor b Culture
Conclusion: Book Launches as Cultural Affirmation
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
I WAS INTRODUCED to K nl Aj b d -executive editor of The News (Lagos) and, now, collaborator and very good friend-when T j l n yan intervened on my behalf as I sought contacts in Lagos for leads on the sections of the book that deal with the praise magazine (see chapter 6 ) and book launch (see the Conclusion). That contact and subsequent friendship introduced me to B nmi Aj b d and also gave me the chance to meet K nl B k r and D l M m d , owners and editors of the Encomium and Ovation stable of publications, who both granted me interviews and gave me access to back issues of their magazines. Michael Effiong, editor of one of M m d s publications, responded generously to my e-mail enquiries. The highly esteemed M lar g nd p took me around in her car in Accra, Ghana, looking for D l M m d in August 2008. Before I went to Ghana, Ato Quayson and Kwasi Ampene instructed me about how to navigate Accra. Sam Omatseye, a longtime friend, acclaimed columnist, and editorial director at Nigeria s Nation , constantly updated me regarding book-launching ceremonies in and around Lagos in 2012. Reuben Abati, then editorial page editor at the Guardian , rendered similar help in 2008.
Members of the Ad k family in Lagos and j b -Imu in made my trips to Nigeria easier and far less costly. I must thank my brother san, my sister-in-law B s , and my nieces T r , T milad , and T t , for housing and feeding me, and for never making me think for a second that I might have overstayed my welcome in their home. Two of my other brothers, R m and K nl , drove me around on different occasions, sometimes as far as Il -If . K k and Mos n, my other sisters-in-law, were unfailingly hospitable. At Imu in, my brother Sunday and my sister-in-law l , and my cousin Gbay Ad b nj and his wife Y m , pointed me in many useful directions and, along with K h nd t nw and Mrs. J. A. g nk y (my mother-in-law), took extraordinary measures to protect me. I once had to drag p , my nephew, from his campus dormitory to the newspaper archives at the Hezekiah Oluwasanmi Library in If for two days. At If , a few calls made by my cousin and immediate past Dean of Engineering, K h nd T w , were a trip saver. What of eun and Buki An fow e! Unfortunately, eun passed away in February 2015 and will not read this book. Apart from other unforgettable graces, I remember eun instructing his driver to get me, safely and on time, notwithstanding the chaotic Lagos roads, to a book launching. In taking this dear nephew of mine at the time it did, death has been very, very unkind to my family.
Many colleagues helped me along. Miriam Conteh-Morgan gave consistently valuable interlibrary loan information when she was the Africana Librarian at Ohio State University. Ohio State s Center for African Studies, then directed by Kelechi Kalu, gave me the opportunity to test some of the ideas in the Introduction when I was invited to give the first Owomoyela Lecture on Yor b Studies, sponsored by Yoruba Club 21 of Columbus, Ohio. The appearance of Yoruba Club 21 members at the lecture decked fully in white agb d in solidarity with me, the lecturer who is also one of their own, gave a practical demonstration of one way of being Yor b . (Till today, Yoruba Club 21 members grace the Owomoyela Lecture in white attire. In a case of absolute coincidence, the guest speaker in 2015, Lorand J. Matory of Duke University, and professor in the history and anthropology of gender transformations in y spheres of influence, wore a full white agb d suit for his talk.)
Other forums at which I have shared ideas in the book include the Sawyer Seminar at the University of Michigan and the Baraza Lecture Series at the University of Florida, for which I thank T nd and k Ak ny m , and Hunt Davis Jr. for the pleasure of returning to Gainesville after twenty-one years. Niyi Okunoye invited me to address the If Humanities Group at Obafemi Awolowo University. The If visit, a homecoming of sorts, enabled me to reconnect with Moji Fabusuyi. I have to thank T j l n yan-again-for inviting me twice to participate in the African Studies Lecture series at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Moj l n yan welcomed me generously both times. The book would probably have ended with another publisher were it not for T j s intervention and calm counsel. Jacob Ol p n invited me to give a paper at the conference he hosted on If discourses in 2008 at Harvard University. F mi T w , K nl George, Anthonia Kalu, Kwaku Korang, T y l b , T nj n bi, Rowland Ab d n, N y Af l b , R nk y w m , B d n Jeyifo, and Akin Ad k n responded to parts of this book, either formally in writing or informally during conversations. I hope Mallam T w would be satisfied with what his philosopher s unstinting criticism has done to my understanding of w (being). T y n F l l introduced me to J d Ow y , chair of the Governing Council of Lead City University, Ibadan, who gave me free room and board at the second TOFAC conference, hosted on his campus in 2013. Ad m l DaSylva, T nd Bab w l , and Doyin Aguoru welcomed me with open arms at the TOFAC conference held in Lagos in 2012. I cannot forget Akin l for sending me a pristine copy of Ad b y Babal l s w n Or k B r k nn after he read my plea that this book is not listed in any online library catalog in the United States. I reserve my deepest gratitude for one of a rare breed of artist-scholars, Moy k d j , Professor of Art and Art History at the University of Texas, Austin, whose work, given free of charge, adorns the front cover of this book. John-Michael Rivera, Frederick Luis Aldama, Cheryl Higashida, Dan Kim, and the late Vincent Woodard gave me collegial support in the early days of the project when we were all teaching at the English Department of the University of Colorado, Boulder.
It is certain that my folks in Cincinnati, Chicago, and Columbus, T y , B l j , Dim j , and T y , are tired of my unsolicited musings about the ungraspable ways of being Yor b , thoughts that I usually interject into discussions of apparently unrelated conversations with as they say in j b or as they do in y . This is to thank them for being my ideal audience. They all saw through, and still accommodated, the poorly disguised disalienation ambition that is condensed in my formulaic phrasing and, perhaps, this book project.
Parts of chapter 1 and a section of chapter 6 have appeared in Oral Tradition 25, no. 2 (2010) and Critical Inquiry 38, no. 2 (2012). I thank the editors and the anonymous reviewers who evaluated the articles. For including an earlier version of chapter 2 in Yoruba Fiction, Orature, and Culture: Oyekan Owomoyela and African Literature and the Yoruba Experience (2011), I thank Toyin Falola and Adebayo Oyebade. The publishers of Ovation magazine kindly granted permission to reproduce in this book-and earlier in Critical Inquiry -pictures originally printed in the magazine.
Introduction
I N THIS BOOK , I conceive of culturally significant ideas, objects, and motions in two ways. The first concerns the gestures that people who self-identify as Yor b construe and circulate to articulate their proclamations to others, both in ordinary circumstances and at critical life passages such as birth, death, and marriage. The second principle of cultural being that I deploy requires that those who identify as non-Yor b concede as intelligible, tacitly or implicitly through various means of reciprocation and participation, those gestures that the Yor b present as theirs. In the grounding assumptions of this book, two individuals can be acting as Yor b while haggling over the price of a packet of spaghetti in English language at a market in Il -If , Nigeria, every time a bargain seeker, even if non-Yor b , appeals to the seller with the name of the Yor b divinity of commerce, saying aj , and the Yor b seller tries to maintain her price position by pleading, even in English, You are my first customer today to convince the buyer into believing that he or she is the embodiment of his or her good fortune for the day. In the interpretation presented here, the non-Yor b pe