THE SCHOLAR IN THE WESTERN ACADEME:COGNITIVE POWERHOUSE AND EMASCULATED CAPITAL? PART 1

As I read more and more writings by scholars,particularly in academic journals,I am struck by the polish in expression,the depth of analysis,the clarity of thought,demonstrated by these works.If it were possible to describe the quality and scope of effort represented by these efforts in terms of energy,it would be difficult to quantify the amount and quality of such energy.The academic makes his or her living from cultivating a culture of breadth and depth of reading,a rigour and precision of thinking and the mastery of particular conventions of expression,developing all these skills to a level not arrived at by most people.

On reading these articles in academic journals and marvelling at the quality of knowledge they demonstrate,a quality that enables one to travel in mind to Ethiopia,for example, and survey centuries of artistic development as embodied in the African Arts special issue of Spring 2009,I ask myself what the diligent knowledge maker gains from the remarkable exercise represented by these journal articles, an exercise on which so much carefully cultivated and refined energy has been expended.As far as I know,the scholar is paid nothing for articles published in academic journals.In addition,I understand the scholar has to sign over their rights to such articles to the publishers of the journals.Personally,if there is another definition of slavery,I want it to shown to me and an explanation made as to why it is different from what,as far as I can see,is the culture of mutually acquiescent theft of intellectual property represented by these terms of publication in academic journals.

In books where scholars publish their previously published work from different journals,one reads them thanking the editors or publishers of the journals for allowing them to republish THEIR OWN ARTICLES FOR WHICH THEY WERE PAID NOTHING BY THE JOURNALS, in the books where the articles are collected.George Steiner's fantastic Language and Silence which ranges over different Western civilisations,across time and space,also demonstrates such an emasculation in the command of one's own creative capital.Having invested a lifetime in the cultivation of such astonishing knowledge,Steiner,as a prize for belonging to what one bookseller,in explaining the principles at play in this culture of theft of intellectual capital by the owners of monetary capital,called the privilege of publication that is vital to belonging among the "intellectual fraternity",had to surrender control of the fruits of a lifetime's efforts to people who might not have spent the kind of time he spent in cultivating such knowledge.No.They were not so foolish.They spent their time learning how to acquire financial capital so they could control the economic value of the efforts of those who,in their lust for knowledge,spend a good part of the most productive years of their lives in endless study and the reproduction of that study in innumerable words or scientific formulae.

TRANSFORMING LOST SPACE: FROM CHAOS TO ORDER IN THE CREATION OF JHALOBIA PARK AND GARDEN PART 1

BY

IFUEMI AND TOYIN ADEPOJU

The Jhalobia Recreation Park and Garden at Murtala Muhammed Airport Road in Lagos, Nigeria, is a project that is richly complex on many levels. It is a park and garden that was created to improve the social and environmental health of the community in the midst of a political upheaval that has negatively affected all levels of life in Nigeria since the 1970s.It is also a good example of the transformation of ‘lost land’ into sustainable development for the use of the local community while raising the profile of the country.

Roger Trancik laments the decline in the aesthetics of the urban fabric on account of “lost space” :

The lost space is the unstructured leftover landscape at the base of the high rise tower....or the unused sunken plaza...away from the flow of pedestrian activity in the city. The lost spaces are the surface parking lot that ring the urban core of almost all American cities and sever connection between the commercial centre and residential areas. They are the no man’s land along the edges of the freeways nobody cares about maintaining anyway, much less using.....lost spaces are also the abandoned water front’s train yards, vacated military sites and industrial complexes that have been moved out of the suburbs for easier access and perhaps lower taxes. They are the vacant blight-clearance sites. Remnants of the urban renewal days ... that were for a multitude of reasons never developed. They are residential areas between districts and loosely composed commercial strips that emerge without anyone realizing it. Lost spaces are deteriorated parks and marginal housing projects that have to rebuild because they do not serve their intended purpose...generally speaking lost spaces are undesirable urban centres that are in need of redesign...anti spaces making no positive contribution to the surroundings and its users. They are... ill defined without measurable boundaries and fail to connect elements in a coherent way. On the other hand, they offer tremendous opportunity to the designer or urban developer and creative infill and rediscovery of many hidden resources of our cities.”

A similar understanding of the creative potential and spatial configurations of “lost space” has enabled the actualization of the vision embodied by Jhalobia Recreation Park and Garden. Philosophical conceptions emerge from the various processes the space has undergone from its earlier use as a refuse dump,to its transformation by Jhalobia in the face of the scepticism of onlookers,who could see the space only in terms of the rubbish dump it used to be, to its present state and in relation to its projections for the future.

The vision realized in the reconfiguration of Jhalobia Park brings to life the radical difference between the previous raw state of the park and the beautiful form Jhalobia eventually created from that inchoate form. This distinction between a previous,unformed state and a later, aesthetically valuable structure demonstrates the contrast between the vision of the artist in relation to the raw material they are dealing with and other people’s perception of that raw material.This contrast is exemplified by the cynicism with which Jhalobia’s efforts at transforming the rubbish dump into what eventually became the recreation park and garden were first received.This experience demonstrates a distinction between the penetrative vision of the artist and the limitations of the perceptions of others, as suggested by the artist Paul Gauguin’s sculpture of his own head with the eyes closed .The closed eyes suggest the withdrawal of vision from an external to an internal focus, thereby facilitating a depth of penetration into the possibilities of the form the artist is working with.

The focus on inner vision suggests a movement from a quotidian to an inspired perception within the matrix of the mind. What is perceived by physical vision is transformed in its contact with the sensibilities already embodied in the mind of the artist. Gauguin’s depiction of the creative process in terms of a movement from outer to inner vision suggested by the closing of the eyes is relevant both literally and metaphorically because such perceptual transmutations are possible under a variety of contexts which may or may not involve the overt meditative absorption suggested by Gauguin’s depiction of the artist as closing his eyes in order to better access his contemplative powers.The essential significance of the value of Gauguin’s depiction of his contemplative activity could be described in terms of what is understood in Classical Yoruba aesthetics as “oju inu” or “oju okan” which is the inner sight or mind’s eye while “oju ode” or “oju lasan”,the bare eye,is the outer sight . The outer sight consists in the ability to perceive the physical world while the inner sight consists in the capacity to perceive the aspects and possibilities of the physical universe which might not be obvious to people who do not have the requisite sensitivity to see beyond the obvious. The transformation of what was once a rubbish dump into the sublime beauty of a green space embodied by Jhalobia Park and Garden represents per excellence the triumph of artistic vision over the limitations represented by the material character of the world.

The ability to perceive the possible in the unlikely and give birth to a vision which transcends the commonplace is what has led to the artist being perceived as a reflection of Yahweh, the creator of the universe in Classical Jewish thought. The English thinker Samuel Taylor Coleridge describes artistic creativity as a manifestation in the finite world of the primal act of creation in the infinite I AM . Aesthetic conceptions inspired by Classical Yoruba thought understand the artist as a partner in the creation of the universe through the convergence of primal potentiality as embodied by Olodumare,of wisdom,actualized in Orunmila,of creativity, realized in Obatala,of continous progression as demonstrated through Ogun .

These conceptions of the human artist as co-creator with the divine creator converge in the image of the artist as both venerator and shaper of the earth,as suggested by the the Igbo conception of art as veneration of Ala,the goddess of the earth in Igbo cosmology. The chtonic presence whose body is the earth cooperates with her children who seek to actualize her latent beauty .The archetypal creators bring the universe into being, and the work of the human creator both echoes and complements the primal creation. Both creator and created shape order out of chaos.Their activity involves the continuous unfolding of form out of formlessness.

The understanding of the creation of the universe as an unfinished,ongoing endeavour in which the creator and the human being are partners demonstrates values that are suggestive for an appreciation of the transformation of the chaos and formlessness represented by the previous state of the site of Jhalobia Park and Garden into the pioneering park in the city of Lagos.The divine mind is described by various creation stories as perceiving within formlessness or chaos the possibilities for life and form that the divine impulse subsequently activates through its creative power.These possibilities continue to unfold under the impetus of the initial creative impulse.The creation of Jhalobia Park represents the transformation of chaos and formlessness through the creative drive in terms of which the park has continued to grow. The beginning of the effort to transform this chaotic lost space into a haven can be likened to the primal explosion which scientific cosmology describes as the origin of the structure and the possibilities of life that have emerged in the universe. The aesthetic principles which resonate in Jhalobia Park are representative of the laws through which beauty emerges from order. The life represented by the plants is shaped by the gardeners into forms that are are pleasing to the human mind.The conjunction between aesthetic order and life suggests a correlation with the emergence of order and life from formlessness in the creation of the cosmos.

Even though we did not consciously cultivate a theoretical direction in relation to the garden, we were guided by certain aesthetic values which can be understood as related to cultural forms emergent across time and space. These cultural forms emerge in two categories. The first category consists of actual artistic forms. The second is represented by critical and theoretical reflections on art.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brockmann, Rolf and Gert Hodder, Adunni: A Portrait of Susan Wenger (Machart:Hamburg,1994)

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor Biographia Literaria: Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life and Opinions (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1985)

Lawal, Babatunde, “Orinolise: The Hermeneutics of the Head and Hairstyles among the Yoruba”, http://www.tribalarts.com/feature/lawal/ (Accessed 21/05/09)

........................... “Aworan: Representing the Self and its Metaphysical Other inn Yoruba Art”, The Art Bulletin,2001

Oguibe, Olu “God’s Transistor Radio” at http://www.camwood.org/Olu_Oguibe_on_culture.html (Accessed 21/05/09)

Ofeimun, Odia ,“In Search of Ogun: Soyinka, Nietzsche and the Edo Century” at http://www.greatbenin.org/lectures.html (Accessed 21/05/09)

Soyinka, Wole Myth, Literature and the African World (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,2008)

.......................The Credo of Being and Nothingness (Ibadan:Spectrum,1991)

Trancik, Roger, Finding Lost Space: Theories of Urban Design (John Wiley,1986)

Ulli Beier,The Return of the Gods: The Sacred Art of Susanne Wenger (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,1975)

Wallace, Robert ,The World of Van Gogh (New York: Time Inc, 1971) 118.

Wenger, Susanne and Gert Chesi, A Life with the Gods in their Yoruba Homeland (Worgl: Perlinger Verlag,1983)

Wenger, Susanne, The Sacred Groves of Osogbo(Austria: Augustine Merzeder,1990

TWENTIETH CENTURY AFRICAN ARCHITECTURE

African architecture

AFRICAN ART IN 20TH CENTURY

African art

A SUPERB ARTICLE ON AFRICAN ARTS

African literature

THE ART OF GELE

Gele image from Koye Okediji's photo album The Gallery

The gele [elaborate Nigerian women's headdress ] is an art form,as recognized by Koye Okediji,who posted this grand image.

Why is it art?

It is art because it transforms the functional into the elegant and mysterious.A covering for the head becomes something much more,a skyward looking arabesque of folds and patterns,where cloth undergoes a metamorphosis into a salute to the head as metaphysical centre of the self,a visual oriki,honorific poetry that celebrates the head as the matrix of direction for the body,as described by Babatunde Lawal on the relationship between the aesthetics of the head and hair in Classical Yoruba art and Yoruba metaphysics in "Orinolise:The Hermeneutics of the Head and Hairstyles among the Yoruba".[http://www.tribalarts.com/feature/lawal//

There are different styles of gele.The art is recognized as something that many women practice but not all are expert in,so in a market one could find gele experts who would tie the gele for a fee according to the shape of the client's head,and the client can collect later.

Gele is underappreciated as an art form from a Classical African culture.

UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis - Fractal Cities Book

UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis - Fractal Cities Book

ON MEDITATION,THE THIRD EYE AND TECHNIQUES OF EXPANSION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Inter-Cultural Conceptions of Extra-Occular Vision

Chakra theory

Specifically,as to the issue of the Third Eye,my two major sources on it are Lobsang Ramapa's book with that title (his work is very questionable although very interesting) and some reading on the concept of the chakras in yoga and the adaptation of the concept in Western esotericism,along with similar ideas in the Yoruba Orisa tradition.

The basic notion is that the human being possess a third eye that enables perception of non-material realms of existence.Some accounts locate that eye between the physical eyes,and some identify it with what is understood in Yoga as a chakra or energy center located in what is understood as the subtle body or energy matrix that surrounds and interacts with the body,transmitting energy from other dimensions into the self, projecting energy from the self and maintaining equilibrium between the self and the rest of the patterns of energy that the universe consists of..A related perspective correlates it with the pineal gland,which such accounts locate between the eyes,thereby identifying the glands as the physical counterpart of the chakras.

Theories of Relationships between Physical Vision and Levels of Perception

The Classical Yoruba conception of the Orisa tradition presents a related idea in terms of a mode of perception related to physical sight but understood instead as an expansion of that sight beyond the frequency of signals that are discernible to the physical eyes.That is the understading of it I have deduced from my experince in relation to such sources as a paper on Classical Yoruba art which claims that the images of bulbous eyes in such art refers to such an extension of vision,along with Rowland Abiodun's (?) beautiful essay on conceptions of vision in Classical Yoruba thought where vision is associated with a range of capacities,from reflection,to imagination and psychic perception,going beyond what the eye is conventionally able to see.This can also be related to Aristotle's conception of the relationship between vision and reflection,perhaps in his Metaphysics, and to Moyo Okedji's conception of semioptics,which develops a focus on vision in relation to cognition.But as the critic in Africa's Ogun observes,such emphasis on vision needs to be complemented with a sensitivity to the entire range of sensory possibilities.Along those lines,Yoga locates the psychic centers all over the body and the Rosicrucian order AMORC develops a system of cultivating psychic sensitives through various senses.

Spiritual and Psychic Development as Essentially a Do it Yourself Activity

My experience with issues of development of the self beyond the limitations of conventional education as popularised by Western culture is that it is often a highly individual affair.A friend of mine once likened it to navigating one's way through a river by using stones in the river bed which are not visible on the surface of the river.Each person who does it will have to use the same stones as stepping points if they are to pass through that river,but the fact that they cannot see those stones means that a lot of reliance will have to be placed on individual initiative,meaning each person's experience will be unique.

Along those lines,I think that nobody else's story or technqiues are not likely to be adequate for any other person.They can help,but to a large extent one has to navigate the challenges and opportunities oneself and discover what works best for one ,which might not prove relevant at every point in one's life,meaning one has to strive to be stable,steady and consistent,while responding to change in one's self and the relationship of the self with the rest of the world.At least,that's my approach.

I would suggest that you describe your experience.Then I would reflect on it and make comments as well as I can and then relate it to the concepts and possibly experiences of the third eye I am familiar with.If you were to discuss the experiences in the open forum the rest of us might able able to learn from it.If you dont want to discuss the experiences in the open forum you can write to my email.If you dont want to discuss it all,then we could rest with what we have discussed so far.

The Fear that Emerges from Exposure to Novel Realities

As for being terrified as you described,that would be expected if one is penetrating into realms of being that are not discernible to most people,and so do not form part of what one has been taught to expect of reality.But I would urge that one should gather momentum and proceed,as long as no danger is evident,even if one has to take sabbaticals, from practice so as to let one's system acclimatise to the new orientation into which the self has been initiated.Such sabbaticals could last as long as one considers adequate,depending perhaps on the intensity of the exposure one is acclimatising to.

Meditation and similar disciplines are techniques for expanding consciousness to take in more than what is normally available and some of that perception is so well outside the range of conventional experience that it could be frightening,even though at times it has been staring us in the face all the time and we simply were not able to understand it for what it is,like an ant that sees human beings everyday but does not know what they are.If that ant is one day able to understand what a human being is,at least to a degree,since even human beings have a quite limited understanding of themselves,if there is little or no tradition of knowledge of humans in the ant world,the ant will have to rely on trial and error to correlate that knowledge with its more limited universe.If such knowledge already exists in the ant world,it would have to relate such new knowledge to other accounts of humans in the ant world,most,if not all of which will necessarily be fragmentary,centered on the limitations of individual perception etc,and make the most of such fragments.

I am not implying a comparison of superiority between the ant and the human being,and therefore between the human being and what they perceive through such expanded perception,since from some perspectives the human being is not necessarily superior to the ant,but is better understood as different,being a different mode of being.I am trying to suggest what I suspect is the distance between the reality of the universe and what we are able to perceive with our conventional understanding and any other perception,even those coming from meditation,and similar disciplines.


Suggestions about Sources of Information

Ornella Corozza's Near Death Experiences..

For an exploration of conceptions of the relationship between aspects of the self ,the body an levels of consciousness a useful book might be Ornella Corozza's Near Death Experiences.

It is also useful to familiarize oneself with as broad a range as possible of accounts by others who explore similar possibilities.In that regard the list is endless.Nothing can replace the combination of practice and reading.As much reading as possible.

"On Invoking Spirits" and "Shrines as Psychic Batteries".

I have something I wrote some time ago which I have will post soon.Its on invoking spirits which might be helpful,since its another branch of similar interests.I will also post an essay "Shrines as Psychic Batteries" on how my psychic sensitivities were stimulated through meditation on sacred trees in Benin-City.

Chaos Magic,Hinduism,Buddhism and Yoga.

I have found the Wikipedia entry on Chaos Magic helpful on relationships between faith and knowledge.You could read about meditation.It seems,though,that lot of the material on meditation is rather general,although a lot of techniques and ideas can be learnt particularly from Classical Indian thought,specfically,Hindui

sm,Buddhism and Yoga.

Christiam Mysticism: St.John of the Cross .

A writer that comes to mind,even though he might not be relevant to you,is the Christian mystic St.John of the Cross.I was wondering if his emphasis on what he describes as contemplative purgation,exresed in terms of the imagery of the self being transformed through fire might be helpful to you. If you are in Nigeria you might find him in either in general bookshops or Cathoc church bookshops,such as St.Dominic's bookshop in Yaba.He can be a demanding read,but very powerful.A master of sublime beauty,particulary in his poetry,and muscularly potent in his exegesis of that poetry.

Islamic Mysticism:Ibn Arabi

Another writer who seesm to emphasise the opening to vast possiblities in terms of the distance between modes of perception,although that's a point that most explorers of such possisibilities depict, is the Islamic mystic Ibn Arabi,who wrote of perceving an ocean without shore and a shore without ocean.The bookm that intrduced me to him is The Unlimited Mercifier.

Western Esotericism:Aleister Crowley,Dion Fortune and AMORC

One person whose influence resonates throughout the Western esoteric tradition since the 20th century and who is a true conoiessuer of the unknown,the frightening and the courage to voyage as far as one can is the English occultist Aleister Crowley.In my view,any adventurer into unconventional realms of being will need something like Crowley's unrelenting spirit,his love of experiment,his absolute devotion to his calling.His weakness,in my view,was that he did not appreciate sufficiently the value of a moral base in his investigations.In that regard,Buddhism ,Christianity and Hinduism are far superior to the achievements of people like Crowley,although it seems to me that those older traditions are very careful not to reveal too much.For Crowley and other Western occultists,like the more balanced Dion Fortune,there are many occult bookshops in Nigeria.

One can learn a lot from the the Rosicrucian order AMORC.Along with meditation,central to their methods,they integrate ritual,broad philosophical and scientific study,techniques for psychic development and exposure to an almost global range of knowledge traditions.They are very active in Nigeria and online.

The Classical African Context: Owen Burnham and Ayi Kwei Armah

I would like to suggest writers working from an African context,although my knowledge there is much more limited,particularly since most of what I have read so far does not describe the techniues used in terms of a rationale that can be applied outside the specialised contexts of particular religions.Of what I have read of African techniques of expanding consciousness,perhaps the best is African Wisdom by Owen Burnhan,a small but very rich book.I will post a review of the book.Another is the conversations between the healer Damfo and Densu in Ayi Kwei Armah's The Healers,a very powerful work which needs to be studied repeatedly and applied imaginatively.I have a blog where I am reproducing those conversations.Most of the other material I have read in relation to Africa is of a general theoritical nature,although theory is vital.I understand Malaudama Patrice Some is quite good,though.

The African Diaspora: Baba Ifa Karade.

One could read some powerful looking material coming out of the African Diaspora and very visible on Goggle,such as the work of Baba Ifa Karade on his priestly traning in Ifa.

The Internet

Of course,the material on all these subjects on the internet is as good as infinte.All the writers mentioned above are well represented online.The scope of the literature available through online outlets like Amazon is also difficult to overestimate.