>> Automated: From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
^M00:00:04
^M00:00:22
>> Mary-Jane Deeb: So, good afternoon everyone, and welcome to the African and Middle East division. I'm Mary-Jane Deeb, chief of the division, and I'm delighted to see you, so many of you here today for the presentation that will surely, surely thrill you. It is by Toyin Falola, a man who, in his writings and in his talks, challenges our preconceptions, who let's us look at the world, and at Africa in particular, from new and exciting perspective. Dr. Angel Batiste will introduce him more fully in a moment, but I feel I must first say a few things about him. I actually met him here at the library several years ago when he first became a member of the board of the Scholars Council at the Kluge Center, which at the time was under Dr. Carolyn Brown, who is with us today. And so we had a couple of very interesting discussions, and then one day, a couple of years later, he called out of the blue and suggested that I present my candidacy to the African Studies Association Board, as I had worked for many years on North Africa. I did, and was very honored when I was elected by the members of the ASC, ASC. I then attended two of the board's weekend meetings and watched how Professor Falola deftly and diplomatically guided his proceedings, highlighted important issues, advised on important matters, suggest the speakers, brought up new ideas. Why am I saying this? My point is that he is an -- not only an extraordinary scholar, as you will hear in a moment, but that his accomplishment range in many, many fields, in many ways. He's a dreamer, a scholar, a thinker, but he's also very man -- a practical man. A man who knows where things should be going. And so, not surprisingly, as you will be invited to see in, after the talk, Dr. Batiste has arranged a wonderful display of Professor Falola's works and works about him in our conference room. So, not surprisingly, I found a book which was dedicated to him, and the book speaks about the man, the boss, the muse. But if you look at the chapters, Toyin Falola, a poet within and without, chapter three, chapter four, Toyin Falola, volcanic force, [inaudible] news, Toyin Falola, the African historian and scholar, Toyin Falola, the master teacher, Toyin Falola in his intellectual majesty, Toyin Falola, a new Renaissance man. And it goes on chapter after chapter, the recognition of what he has contributed to the field. So, but I will leave that to Dr. Batiste, who told me, "Don't take my ideas this morning." No. I said, "No, no. There's so much to be said." But I want to say a few things about our division before we continue with the program. Our division is very honored to have Professor Falola speak to us today. But it's a division that is responsible for countries around the world, for 78 countries, to be exact. And for its literature, politics, history, humanity, social sciences, sciences. We have collections that we hold [inaudible] in the vernacular, collections from the Middle East, Central Asia, the whole of Africa, North and South Saharan, the Caucasus. We go -- we extend up to small groups in China and we have -- and we have three sections, and three sections with scholars, really, who are working and who advise and help researchers to bring their materials to them. The three sections are the Hebraic section, the African section, and the Near East sections. And today, this program is organized by the African section. And we don't only, you know, provide the materials for research. We also try to display our materials to attract people. We have exhibits. We have certainly exciting programs, as the one today. We show films. And recently, after a long administrative road that we all took, we're now on the social media and we have blogs, and our staff writes blogs about the collections, about our materials. We actually have Facebook. Finally, we moved into the 21st century. And so but they focus, again, on our collections, as a way of reaching out. So, you will have, on your chair, you will find our ads for our blogs and Facebooks. So, those, we announce our programs there. Please subscribe so that you can have the announcements come to you and you know what is going on here at the Library. We have -- like us on Facebook. We're really nice. You know, you should just like us, okay? And I have, again, yesterday, African Studies Association has decided link up to us, and they -- not only do they like us. They actually posted [inaudible] blog on [inaudible]. They announced Professor Falola's talk, so that is going out to the African Studies community all over, and so we're very excited about that and we'd like you to join us. I will stop now, but I want to remind you that we are videotaping this program, as we videotape most of our programs, which means that it will be accessible not only here, the talk, but around the world. And so, if when the question-answer time comes, if you want to ask questions, please remember that you are being videotaped, and asking questions means that you've given us permission to record you and that your remarks may be posted on the web. Okay? So, now, let me introduce our own Dr. Angel Batiste, area specialist for West Africa and, really, a [inaudible] scholar and librarian in the African section of the division. And she will give you more. More depth to my presentation on Professor Falola. Okay, so Dr. Batiste. 
^M00:08:19
[ Applause ] 
^M00:08:26
>> Dr. Angel Batiste: Good afternoon. I'd like to echo Dr. Deeb, the chief of our division, in welcoming you to the African and Middle Eastern Division. And I'd also like to extend a personal invitation. Return, return to our African and Middle Eastern Division reading room to explore the vast wealth of Africana resources that are held by the library. Today is a special honor for me. Dr. Falola doesn't quite know it, but this has been an objective of mine for probably five or more years, so I thank you for being here today. It is a special honor for me to introduce Professor Toyin Falola, widely acclaimed by colleagues and students in the African studies field, as the dean of Nigerian history, the doyen of African studies, and a Neo-Renaissance man. Dr. Falola is the Jacob and Francis singer, most sacred chair in the humanities, and university distinguished teaching professor of African studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
^M00:10:01
He is a member of the Library of Congress Scholars Council, and currently he is in residence as the Kluge chair in countries and cultures of the south, at the library's John W. Kluge Center. Researching our project titled African Immigrant Communities in the United States. A historian, a poet, critic, master teacher, and community leader, Dr. Falola earned his BA and PhD, in history, at the University of Ife in Nigeria. He is a fellow of the Historical Society of Nigeria, and a fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters. His wide-ranging intellectual interests include Atlantic history, diaspora and migration, empire and globalization, intellectual history, international relations, religion and culture. Dr. Falola has more than 150 books in print. Actually, I did a search of the library's card catalog, and we hold 156 books in print. 
^M00:11:32
^M00:11:36
As a champion of the African studies [inaudible] Dr. Falola has supported research through his mentorship of students, and his long term editorship of the African Economic History Review. His service on many academic journal editorial boards and his creation and editorship of several academic book series, including the University of Rochester series, studies in African History and the Diaspora, the Carolina Academic Press, African Rural series, and Culture and Customs of Africa by Greenwood Press. Dr. Falola has received various awards and honors, including, I believe, five honorary doctorate degrees, seven honorary doctorate degrees, the Jean Holloway award for teaching excellence, the Texas Execs teaching award, the Khaldun Distinguished Award for Research Excellence, the Cheikh Anta Diop Award for Exemplary Scholarship in African Studies, and the African Studies Association Distinguished Africanist Award. The Association of Third World Studies has endowed a book prize names after him, the Toyin Falola annual prize for the best book on Africa. The cumulative contributions of Dr. Falola, as an imminent scholar and public intellectual, have led to five volumes published in his honor, in a biocritical work. The impact of his scholarship is presented in Abdul Bangura's Toyin Falola and African Epistemologies. I'd now like to introduce Dr. Toyin Falola.
^M00:13:50
[ Applause ] 
^M00:13:55
>> Toyin Falola: Thank you. I think those introductions should serve as a lecture so that we can begin to ask questions. Thank you so much for your kindness and I can only pray and wish that I'm able to repay that kindness. I have to follow sudden combinations, some of which may be new to you, which is that, any time I speak, I must first exchange a greetings from the kings that I do represent each time I do a public performance. And I'm representing three kings here. First I must extend my greetings to you [inaudible] who ask me to extend this greetings to you. I have to deliver those messages. I'm very grateful to Mary, to Angel, to Carolyn here. You wanted to come on -- she wanted to come and do her research and [inaudible] decided to stay. When she was a director of Kluge, she asked me for a proposal, which I wrote on the basis of which I'm here. And on December 15th, I will be doing a conference on African immigrant in the US. This is more publicity, and I hope you all will come. Let me provide a small context to this topic, and it's a [inaudible] context. Many of you may not be aware that this is a tremendous moment in Africa, with the creation of so many private universities. Indeed, in a country like Nigeria, the number of private universities is now more than the number of public schools. And we have colleagues who have the universities of their own [inaudible] call to me [inaudible] call to me, I will have been thinking of establishing my own university. Because nobody saw this 30 years ago, where a colleague in Seattle moved to Ghana to establish his own university. And a good friend of mine, when I was teaching [inaudible] to establish his own university. What this has done is to let us begin to rethink the inheritances in various ways, and to use those private universities to test a set of new ideas and to see things that don't walk. With private universities, can rethink with [inaudible] outside of a [inaudible] state power structure and outside of corruption. So, and as we are -- I'm on the board of them, some of these universities, in which we have the opportunities to say, "This is how we want to define humanities," and things like that, "and this is how we want to define some of what we inherited from the western academy and localize them, far more creatively than our predecessors have done." And this is part of the challenge. And what I've been doing, in recent years, is to rethink many of these things. So, this lecture will actually work more as a workshop than as a lecture, and which has been three days since [inaudible]. Here's what we agree with. How do we now translate what we're talking about into curriculum and begin to teach them? Because our project of translation moves us away just from making sure it's [inaudible] without grounding them in those things that are practical. And we're very grateful to the [inaudible] that that whole date is award for last year to one of these person who created his own university in Ghana. He used to work for Microsoft, and the ability to overthink many of this is all new in the continent. So, the component of what I want to present is in four categories. What is [inaudible] archive? How can I break it down into its components? I will do those. But the real challenge you want, the ontologies, epistemologies, I will not be able to do. Because that's, will fit more into -- morph into a seminar of three hours where we can actually do a lot of debate. And I will also do how we can connect these [inaudible] archives into the public domain. So, the component I'll be talking about explains the interest in library and librarians, and then I will leave out the component that will interest those who like to do [inaudible]. So, let me start by defining what I mean by [inaudible] archives, which is how you cumulate awards and test and ideas and symbols and shrines and images, performances, and [inaudible] that document, as well as picture religious experiences and practices, in ways in which we have [inaudible] has turned an Africa world [inaudible] of philosophies, literatures, languages, histories, and more.
^M00:20:00
And by implication, these [inaudible] archives are huge, unbounded in scale and scope. They store a tremendous amount of data on both natural and supernatural agents [inaudible] gods, good, witches, life, death, festivals. The interaction between the spiritual spaces, you and I, things you can see, and things you cannot see. And we like this change. These archives constitute and save knowledge about the visible and invisible world, even including what you are going to call the nonworld. Together with forces that breathe and forces that don't breathe, secular ideas and nonsecular ones, with destinies, ideas within cities, kinships, medicine, to viral meds, sciences and technologies. Above all, the content shelves on sacrifices and shrines, names, places, incantations, invocations, and the entire cosmos of all the [inaudible] and their living subjects, among human and nonhuman species. [Inaudible] might have talk about no more than [inaudible], nonhumans, and humans, because in ritual knowledge, they do not make that distinctions between nonhuman and humans. They combine them. And in some ways, what is on down at your feet, what is in the sky, things in the, in the deep sea, they are combined as part of a knowledge system. And I'm [inaudible] the term archives in relation to rituals to challenge the conventions of western archives. Namely, what is deemed worthy of preservation and organization as data, whether or not it is interpreted at any given moment? And this intervention is not to restrict archives inside the location of the library or university or museum. Because you can just locate them that way, the way we traditionally think, in terms of western archives and library. And I'm also seeking to apply the techniques and resources of academic archives to rituals, so that we can have greater evaluation and greater preservation. And I have [inaudible] good sense of archive, as well. One that does not require residency in the academy. And I'm insisting that we must never lose sight of that dimension of archive, that is never fully collected [inaudible] our intense power and agency in invisible ways. The Library of Congress who deal with the visible ways, but there are also archives that had invisible ways to them, and I provoke a category of archive itself with the revolutionary insistence [inaudible] of ritual as a name for a light component of cultural meaning making. How do we contend with the destruction of archive? Various forms of violence. Can we qualify, with certainty, what we can't explain? In varied ways, a countless number of [inaudible] priests, devotees, and practitioners created oral and visual libraries, which are linked to ritual complexes and secular [inaudible]. Subsequently, cultural knowledge has extended from the deep past to our present day. It is true there knowledge that histories and traditions were constituted while identities were formed. And philosophy, as we know it, emerged. Although a lot of people were part of the community, they were there as ordinary members, while others constituted leadership. Today, without specific names, we live out the [inaudible] collectively as it passed. And as traditions, sometimes using traditions in a very misleading way. And there's a [inaudible] of what to call the traditions and ritual archives. We provide templates for the future, and the contents of these archives become philosophy, literature, and history. They are interpretations manifested in our present, as part of our engagement with [inaudible]. Just as in poems, ritual dances, sacred drums, ritual textiles, components of the archives can be isolated, but they can also be combined into a body of interlocking ideas and philosophy, and the context of rough terrain of what you can call ancestral knowledge. Whether you aggregate or disaggregate them, they are called memory, and remembrance in various ways and forms. They star most of our indigenous production. Memories, legacies, histories of our lives and ancestors, and they lead us to the reinvention of the cosmos that we inhabit. Different from, but not useless, to what modern science does. Why postulating the [inaudible] of archives? That is, archives resulting from the [inaudible] countdown built on a template of western knowledge. We can deduce that the [inaudible] well, in some number of ways [inaudible] it has not only proven to be severely limited, but in terms of [inaudible] possibilities as well as [inaudible] but it's also an agency of control that frames our subjectivities and objectivities and that we can pursue them. The [inaudible] archival name pose on us and given prominence over the ancestral ritual archive, living to the original and the traditional of indigenous perspective. They are not genius. In fact, nothing reveals the shallowness of the [inaudible] archive, more than the very timeframe its contents I were to cover. [Inaudible] national archives in Ghana [inaudible] Nigeria, there is [inaudible] records [inaudible] as expected, straight to no more than 65 years, any archive in Africa. They only cover 65 years, and we are talking of a century before Christ. Contributions in those [inaudible] archives are crowded within the colonial time era, and after the colonization, many of them have been left to their own devises, as post-colonial leaders struggle for some other things. And as to the time before, only the long 19th century [inaudible]. Regarding the post-colonial era is a [inaudible] knowledge [inaudible] be confined to the media, because the archives stop collecting materials from the 60s. Why was trouble for [inaudible] economic [inaudible] and cultural survival. Histories of centuries between the Stone Age and the 10th century have been either left to rot or are easily ignored, and in the process, lost, for the most part. This loss is a function of lost archives, and suddenly, there is regard for those archives that can still be reclaimed, as in the case of ritual archives. They are there. We just have to reclaim them. The [inaudible] that the past was not possible to recover is [inaudible] or assumption that many people have come to accept, simply because of [inaudible] coloniality of knowledge, which, unfortunately, incapacitated the possibility of use and transformation of our collective memories. The very incapacitation of ritual archives is, by itself, an example of an epistemic violence. Before going to archives [inaudible] while not necessarily complementary, have created a knowledge divide. The [inaudible] one that is aligned to power [inaudible] and the ritual that is outlined with [inaudible] as opposed to [inaudible] ritual [inaudible] the colonial as raw materials [inaudible] existing permanently in its shadows and dominance. Indeed, the archives of coloniality [inaudible] that go a long way toward advancing the projects of [inaudible] concepts and legacies to save [inaudible] interest. Ritual archives, on the other hand, deal with ancestral legacies and indigenous concepts and epistemologies. History, as defined in the colonial archives, is different from [inaudible] to use [inaudible] by example, as defined in the [inaudible] archives. They are not doing the same thing. While [inaudible] ritual archives [inaudible] within the realm of [inaudible] academy. Analysis of colonial archives I assessed in the categories of originality and validity in the same academy. In the western conception of historical knowledge [inaudible] just to stay with one example, lacks validity. While academic history is [inaudible] with one, time is unreliable, but history is. If time is not accessible and transparent, why history is?
^M00:30:05
[Inaudible] what is [inaudible] graphic knowledge in ways that western conception of knowledge can never do. As an assessment of western education [inaudible] successful acquires new [inaudible] of knowledge for mobility. [Inaudible] rationalizing the pre-western, what grudgingly [inaudible] world views. Why distancing themselves from the previous [inaudible] knowledge. [Inaudible] historical knowledge system has been [inaudible] very formal western system invested with colonizing values of [inaudible]. What is -- how do we define and isolate the contents of these archives and their meanings? You can do it in multiple ways. You can invoke [inaudible] in literature, ritual performances [inaudible] representation of gods and goddesses. It's a fact that this enter the realm of routine expression of spirituality, proverbs, songs, poetry, all of which generate meanings of religious and secular significance. Second, we can utilize the opportunity to frame some dimensions of the epistemology [inaudible] significance of these archives, which is in fact a body of knowledge on a wide range of issues, including but not limited to cultural recognition, ideas and idea formation, semiotics and education. And I'm going to suggest some transformational ways to keep these archives. I want to revalidate these archives, but in doing so, within western [inaudible] academies, to invoke indigenous practitioners in research and knowledge dissemination and to formulate evaluation mechanisms to authenticate indigenous knowledge. And those will communicate them using the [inaudible] of the educational system, indigenous ways of knowing, along with the knowledge on the centers of those [inaudible] knowledges was fully blended with what we do in the academy. Ritual archives tell us that we must review our question, our externally derived approaches, and the limitations of the methodologies with the pride. Western derived disciplines, such as religious [inaudible], history, philosophy, and subjects of the humanities, have carefully fragmented ritual archives. But it's time for all those disciplines to combine to provide [inaudible] of the center of indigenous epistemologies. To unify the anthologies and combine them to theories that will be treated as universal. To take an example, if our ritual archives can work, definition [inaudible] by example. We can call it discipline [inaudible] and turn it into a department. It's [inaudible] the scholars to learn and work across disciplines, and they probably will have been able to decode this epistemology by now, and use it to create other forms of knowledge. They will have covered [inaudible] dimensions of the indigenous. As scholars dealing with Africa, questions must be posed as to how each of us understands and applies indigenous knowledge, which will [inaudible] values and cultures in the research I'm teaching. Should we always ground the analysis and understanding of our fields, solely in western derived epistemologies? No, we should not be doing this. Indeed, where we started, practitioners and others who create archives for us. Others have not studied us, and suddenly, we are [inaudible] studied assets. So, we have to engage in various layers of conversation. Conversations with ourselves, conversations with ritual archives in order to [inaudible] the voices that are not -- that are delegitimated in academic spaces. Pointing to the contents of these archives as [inaudible] of multiple epistemology [inaudible] as well as [inaudible] messaging. How we must interrogate broad academic concepts. What are these things? I will only use just one example object so that I can bring home what I'm talking about, just objects. Objects are tests, and you will look at me very closely. I'm a body of these objects and it's deliberate, because the body you are looking at is just part of the objects [inaudible] archive, including [inaudible], because it has meaning. If I do it this way, this way, this way, with respect to the way I turn it, is an object that is communicating messages. Gods and goddesses generate around them a wide range of paraphernalia of test and sounds [inaudible] sounds, visible and invisible symbols [inaudible] symbols. Objects and signs. Orality, in itself, is extensive, comprising parables, proverbs, tales, allegories, dilemma stories. Drums are musical compositions go with venerations, along with sacrifices, and practitioners and priests within [inaudible] and [inaudible]. Rituals are ritual speech. Ritual speech is very elaborate. Connect with [inaudible] and indigenous proverb systems, and it talks about practices, immunities, and connections and meld with ideas of social control. Invocations have to be made. Invocations constitute an entire library, offerings, compressing food. I identify with specific datas. As [inaudible] and snails for [inaudible] god and a definitive [inaudible] go with his definition of metals. Dress, dances, literature, performance, drama. [Inaudible] which I'm using because of [inaudible] was popularize [inaudible] and without [inaudible] won the Nobel prize. That's the basis of his Nobel, the god of iron. That's where he draws his ideas from. Take [inaudible] for instance, and the god lists you to chants, elaborated [inaudible] chants that you hear from [inaudible] to the borders of [inaudible] tries to dancing, to folklore, to literature, to [inaudible], to decorations or [inaudible] combat land with water, humans with fish and crocodiles. Crocodiles are our neighbors. Fish, they are part of our neighbors in the way these archives are constituted. You are not supposed to be using their skin for decoration. It's like killing your neighbors. These are ideas that would change their meanings because of the way we change the epistemologies. [Inaudible] with productivity, adding to the storehouse of knowledge on woman and gender, we can demonstrate this richness in so many ways, making use of gods and goddesses. As we rework the complexities around the datas to modern disciplines, which we have to do, we have [inaudible] get the ritual archives into many component units, as literature, music, drama, psychology, and topology, and many more. And you and I walk around each component so that its scholar has studied far in various departments. Philosophy, music, drama, literature, linguistics. In each of these disciplines [inaudible] becomes disconnected from the modern layout and intricately connected indigenous epistemology that produces it. In favor of the concerns of the disciplines, frame from all the epistemologies is turn out to be indigenous. Because all we are doing is [inaudible] to start with. In this regard [inaudible] has been disembodied and fragmented. The questions posed can become external to [inaudible] make up. For example, why do you pose a question? What advice a philosophy or a religion? It's you who's posing the question. Incantation's magical tests or creative literary test, if our verses originally recited [inaudible] what happens when they become printed tests? You can translate many of them. Through the printed tests [inaudible] do they become as effective as divination? I can give you an example of an incantation, but once I translate it, it loses its power. It's gone. Tests as in the case of chance, taken out of the [inaudible] at entry points to the understanding of history, to epistemologies of cosmology and metrology. But the cosmology and metrology cannot operate without forms of rationality, and they need to explain other issues, such as medicine, politics, and critical [inaudible]. I'll be skipping many pages. If you are interested in the paper, it's already fully written.
^M00:40:01
It's 54 pages, and I'll be willing to send it to you. Space will not permit me to elaborate on the breadth of these archives or the density of each of them, which is [inaudible] that fragments, and [inaudible] of individual constructions and presentation. Instead, I would like to take some organic matters and objects, some of which I brought with me to illustrate what I'm talking about. And some of them may look so ordinary to you. Let me start with what, if you have been to Brazil or Bayah or Cuba, it is one of the most common objects you are going to find. It's [inaudible] which is mistranslated [inaudible]. It's call [inaudible]. You find it wherever you find [inaudible] the Atlantic [inaudible]. That plant alone, if you go to, you can't go to Candombles, Santeria, and all of them, without confronting it. It's -- it looks to you like a small plant or [inaudible] or [inaudible] photographs, test ties, paintings and sculptures, all like terms of religious significance, but they are tests that you can accumulate into rich archives, and they speak to a wide variety of issues. And these tests are so many, and for those of you who do literature, you may have come across them in this interest of time and passing a number of these things around 
^M00:41:50
[ Inaudible Comment ] 
^M00:41:59
They look ordinary to you, but they open up enormous amount of libraries. Enormous. You have great things fall apart, you will have come across [inaudible] and what that means in terms of significance. These objects that I'm sharing with you, they reach Cuba, Brazil, United States and other areas, to form part of the ritual archives in the Afro-Atlantic religions. On the African side, spirituality and [inaudible] reality are united as in the use of sculpture to represent the datas. So, for instance, this is not an object of embroidery. This is connected to the complexity of divination in which the [inaudible] and he uses it to communicate so many things. And for those of you who have also gone to Brazil [inaudible] you will see the importance and have done it in so many ways [inaudible] in so many ways. And during question and answer time, I can talk about this and you will see how this in itself is like saying you want to write a book [inaudible] it is an object. 
^M00:43:17
^M00:43:23
The [inaudible] were represented by [inaudible] dance before authors bow and arrow symbolized in various forms of origin. Objects peak and they communicate with our worlds, where people will do [inaudible] will do silences, because they are talking. They're using a different language. They're speaking to you, and they're supplying narratives that encourage the creativity of storytelling and the fascinated performance. And then they use of such objects as costumes, ritual trees, woodcarvings, metal sculpture, carvings [inaudible]. Ritual special has become ritual performance, and they not only become librarians. They also are narrators. They manipulate objects. Some [inaudible] stories will follow, and they present ritual performances before an audience to participate. Objects encode the [inaudible] of the being they represent, even telling us they are [inaudible] they are [inaudible]. Whether they are [inaudible] cool and calm all the time, colors are very significant. And when [inaudible] African, pay attention to color, because they are talking to you. They are denotative, as in red, for being aggressive, quick-tempered, white for what it means. And these colors average on variations, as in blue among the [inaudible]. In the contrasts [inaudible] binary epistemology that leads to a series of long conversations on human behavior and interpersonal relationships in society, the extensive poetry does work with words in relation to objects. Yielding methodologies and epistemologies in the realm of the [inaudible] historical and institutions that lead us to [inaudible] of knowing and forms of knowledge. The mistake we've made and why Africans made this mistake is to accept the notion of the museum. That is a big mistake. Because, when you treat them as museum pieces, with short descriptions to describe them, we've undermined them in many ways. But if we have treated them as archival items, we will have acquired a different form of results. Yet these objects actually fit into the description of an archive as a place to keep historical records. Although the collection of certain objects may defy categorization because it means we have to work out alternative sets of categorization, the [inaudible] that I'm spreading around, historical records. The location of an archive may be characterized as an archive in itself, as in the groove of the ritual tree, there are so many. Where the tree and its location constitute a library, documents in an archive are treated as primary sources, so [inaudible] many ritual objects be treated as such, as they communicate messages that can be used to reconstruct the past and understand ideas about the world. Objects open a wide door to a large body of methodologies, stories, legends [inaudible] short and long. And these categories are many. Some, like written records created for specific meaning, that we communicate from one person to another. Some are signed as [inaudible] among the [inaudible] in which the combination of powers in relation to [inaudible] and other objects, formulate extensive codes. And you need special ways to decode them and to create test and interpretations. Ritual communications while elaborate from [inaudible] among the [inaudible] to the interpretation of dreams and many more. Objects represent [inaudible] archives, like cemeteries, a ground of memory, sacred groves, and so many examples that we have been able to ignore. And in those examples, you see how we work into us, spirits. Humans and theories are united in ways of knowing that [inaudible] secularization in academic programs, as some students engage with the belief that witches are with them in their classrooms, thus leading them to the generation of nonwestern ideas. They supply test on the environment and open us to multiple worlds of charms, magic, and medicine. Songs are constructed, derived from them. Based on sound observation of various uses for curing diseases. The [inaudible] that I've just prayed around is part of the species that is common, useful for food, but also for its medicinal properties, from its connections with diabetes, to the reduction of headaches and fever [inaudible] with AIDS, as well. The Brazilian species has multiple uses [inaudible] and antibacterial. Plans are part of our knowledge system. Certain plans entangle a world with those of nonhumans. In this entanglement, facts and fiction become mashed into both complex and simple ideas, and we try to unite them in various ways. They supply ideas of prayers and philosophy, as in the case of [inaudible] and images and sculpture and paintings are abundant, where there are connections with historical writings and with what we call, are characterizing various departments, we need to rethink them and strengthen them. We tend to use more as book covers, the sculpture and paintings, than as elaborate tests within the books.
^M00:49:58
[Inaudible] images of philosophical expressions, connected with thought and life. Look at televisions. We tend to see and appreciate them, not necessarily engage in dialogue with them. However, images represent mentalities, power, and strength. They come used to generate image theories and create extensive narratives on cultures, transcultures, and intercultures. They supply critically [inaudible]. To carve an object is about the representation of self, history, identity. One image of issue, which happens to be one of my favorite thoughts, tell us about social and cultural issues, portray of multiple and ambivalent ideas, represent [inaudible] of [inaudible]. This [inaudible] difference, perception, semiotics, religion. Multiple specializations can emerge around image theory, image [inaudible] methodologies, image anthropology, image and culture, image philosophy, perception on singing, listening, silences, image styling. An image moves you towards virtual images, but it's an aesthetic idea living within that image, alive with test and cultures, forms and styles. While gazing without talking, you create the test on your own, saying something, creating what [inaudible] calls an omni of metaphors. It generates a wide range of imaginations and tough systems. To take [inaudible] image, like the ambiguity of [inaudible] it cannot be ready in an interpretive singularity. [Inaudible] ideas within itself and ideas outside of itself. Same, they may use to see force and strength, power. Epistemic responses that connect back to language and metaphysical perceptions. [Inaudible] about the body, in its physical and nonphysical realms. An element in the body [inaudible] and yet another to the assumptions of transgressions. The politics of images lead us to the pregnancy of culture, ready to give birth to social issues. In a sense [inaudible] you move to the realm of beauty [inaudible] conversation on every day practices, languages, what creation, forceful inscription of perception and experience onto our consciousness. Look further, and in the issue image enforce more dimensions around performance and other bodies of knowledge [inaudible] and other ideas. The thought that you express to yourself and to others, we move you back to the issue image. Its force becomes a part of you. Whether you aide or like issue, the image becomes activated. In the process, you must generate test around the image, expressing your religiosity, philosophy, and opinions. Issue has entered your mental system. Actually, via conversation and with others, your thought is a test on the physical world, on the afterlife, on metrologies, on religion, and more. And your test is going to be different from my own test. An artistic production becomes a body of knowledge at various levels. Political, cultural, social. The issue image transfers you to the understanding of culture and society.  What is left of the past and how the past is sort of formed, deformed, [inaudible] all that and read all that. The past may even be disappearing and that image advances. [Inaudible] originally appears by this small wooden object opens a vastness of knowledge. Its edges become borderless. Its assistance requires a force. We are no longer dealing with the aesthetic of difference, as in looking at objects in the British museum in London and looking at issue in the Republic of Benin. We are first to move into the objects of knowledge, in which all component parts of the body become signifiers of [inaudible] issue. Becomes different. A human's face [inaudible] all the components are breaking them down, and this unit is semiautonomous, but aggregated to [inaudible] issue in [inaudible] of meaning. Had their issue recitation, you create [inaudible] like your own head [inaudible]. That of issues also [inaudible] of intelligence and emotions. All this calculations and miscalculations reside here. You can see his head. You can see his body, his frowns, attributes. Then derive from various parts of these components of the body, all concerned with [inaudible] and destiny. You have to trick your own wisdom and strength to deal with [inaudible] issue, and as you do so, your own thinking process will begin to break down into a series of components, as that of your own wisdom of your own stupidity. You draw in your own [inaudible] knowledge from your stomach, because in some cultures, you put knowledge in your stomach, not just food. To rely on your inner senses, your eyes must work well to recall your inner essence and your perception. So, you become confused, you have to seek wisdom and fully elaborate conversation.  And inside derived from your stomach, you become the point of validation and you can create insets of knowledge. The issue image, coupled with all of the objects as well as all tests, and the entire ritual archives, leads us to the indigenous intellectuals and their epistemologies. Combined, they deal with invisible realities of knowledge, as in witchcraft, while they complicate the visible ones, as in all forms of epistemologies, and of a long section on epistemologies and how, if you are able to use these archives, we will no longer be talking about universalism, what about [inaudible] in which separate epistemologies that derive from the [inaudible] archives will lead us to fresh ideas. And this is going to be a bigger project in which we begin to understand indigenous knowledge systems, the [inaudible] of the entire range of vernacular epistemologies into formal education system, and we begin to teach a new generation of students a new body of ideas. The connection between [inaudible] power and [inaudible] knowledge is very clear-cut, and how [inaudible] knowledge has been problematic in a continent like Africa, and part of the ways in which we can challenge this knowledge is to rethink not just the archives we use, but to search for the very same test of the epistemologies. And these epistemologies are many, and we have not started the work we need to do. Let me now go to the last part, which is, how do we move these archives into the public spaces? Because we have to do them, we have to move them into public spaces. Whether it's tests, objects, or symbols, ritual archives are face serious dangers, ranging from extinction, ridicule, marginalization, and [inaudible]. The first problem is that of intellectual inequality. All externally derived knowledge systems, Islamic and western, are seen to be superior to them. The inability to create permanent written text with specialists linked to formal system of knowledge, as in the case of western derived academies, create a drawback. The social contest of knowledge production is crucial and is [inaudible] of trouble. Africans scholars who produce knowledge for Africa's [inaudible] instead of fully embracing these ancestral epistemologies. What should we do? I want to make five recommendations. First, that we must modify the orientation of our research and that [inaudible] scholars as researchers and [inaudible] side of it, should be integrated in a different manner. That the [inaudible] that we have created is forced and we have to bring back indigenous ways of knowing into what we do. We have to rethink the outcome of our research, the assumption that the research [inaudible] is the most important is very misleading. Indeed, indigenous researchers connect with the organic communities more directly, feeding the constitution of knowledge and ways of knowing. We have to assume that the power of social agency does not just lie in the academy and we must give social agency to those who produce other forms of knowledge.
^M01:00:02
We have to rethink how we produce knowledge and have to ask the question, "Who are we, anyway?" We're right about the sociology of knowledge. Not necessarily by building on indigenous inheritances or by operating indigenous voices into a chaotic [inaudible]. We write about the sociology of social movements. Without joining the working class to protest injustice. We write about gods and goddesses. Why not join in their worship? Is it that observe us. We disconnect what we drew from the public that we serve. We must begin to locate the communities compel and update catalogs. Ritual archives already exist in private spaces with associations, organized [inaudible] and we have to connect more with them. We must begin to encourage autobiographies, [inaudible] and religious [inaudible] and we must begin to keep them in ways that assessable to others. We have to begin the process of digitizing them, given the fact that this is not possible. I'm calling for the reconfiguration of disciplines. Saying that the colonial structure of the old and very new universities has not been very hospitable for this form of archives. We must begin to allow [inaudible] to be reaching with a new set of substance. And even to be written in indigenous African languages. And the academy has to accept the validity of the use African languages as well as the validity of many of these new and alternative sources. And by doing so, the tourists will [inaudible] will be many. I want to read my last paragraph and I want to start with a proverb. "A person who carries a basket of eggs on his head must walk with measured steps." In the final analysis, perhaps you and I as practitioners operating the western academies, will become the traditional intellectuals whose power and legitimacy will be challenged and superseded by organic intellectuals connected with this organic data. And organic intellectuals whose legitimacy will be based on epistemologies derived from ritual archives. As well as intellectual rationality build around cultural legitimacy. They have to rethink what we have inherited, and rethinking them, they may move us forward in new ways. We cannot continue to carry baskets of eggs on our heads and be walking in haste. Thank you very much.
^M01:03:08
[ Applause ]
^M01:03:14
>> Angel Batiste: Thank you, Dr. Falola. I think you've certainly given the African studies field a challenge. But when we look at the African world, the importance of indigenous knowledge becomes very, very critical. At this point, we can open up for a very short Q and A. So, if we have anyone who would like to pose a question?
^M01:03:50
[ Inaudible Comment ]
^M01:04:19
>> Toyin Falola: Okay, I understand now. I can't take many questions so I can answer them. 
>> Angel Batiste: Okay. We'll take all the questions and then Doctor Falola will answer. Cybal, would you like to?
>> Doctor Falola, I'd like to thank you so much for your presentation. It brings back memories to me, because I too am a regular at the University of [inaudible]. While I was there, I was mentored by Professor [inaudible] -
>> Toyin Falola: Of blessed memory.
>> Student: You mentioned around him. I understand what you're saying. I'd like you to clarify, what was it when you said that the distinction of difference between [inaudible] and history? Because as I know it, [inaudible] is history. So just clarify what constitutes [inaudible] makes it different from history.
>> Angel Batiste: Okay. We have a question here. Would you like to go on with your question?
^M01:05:17
[ Inaudible Comment ]
^M01:05:52
>> Joanne: Would you like to go over it?
>> Toyin Falola: Yes, yes. Joanne, you have to ask me a question, I won't let you go. [inaudible] for you.
>> Joanne: Thank you so much for your presentation. 
>> Toyin Falola: Yeah.
>> Student: First of all [inaudible] Falola. My question is, though [inaudible] African languages documenting the statue era of report. [inaudible] Are you particular about African institutions or the United States? That is one part of it. My other question is, how is it with [inaudible] with use African beliefs to write a report [inaudible] participants [inaudible] Africa?  
>> Toyin Falola: Okay. I want to answer all the questions.
>> Angel Batiste: Okay. let's take one last -- the two last questions and then we'll let the professor answer or respond. 
>> Student: So [inaudible] the opportunity to [inaudible].  For those of us in diaspora who are part of the descendent community. We come seeking knowledge that is our inheritance. Some of it we can get through books. We don't have access to the oral tradition in the same way. I once asked Dr. [inaudible] about the way we, children in the diaspora understand things. And he told me that sometimes the ancestors talk to the children in our dreams. And I'm wondering if you might talk about that.
>> Toyin Falola: Yes, ma'am.
>> Student: [Inaudible] can you just tell us the ritual [inaudible]
>> Toyin Falola: Well, I don't think you can have the time to do that. What are all the ways [inaudible] because what I was trying to say is that they're very elaborate. They just don't mean one thing and also be in mind, and objective operates in multiple ways in terms of combination. So, this [inaudible] and turned them around and combined them differently. That's the way objects work. So, they don't lend themselves to just singularity of interpretations. So, and then when you -- so, when you take this one, for instance, it gets connected to rites of passage. And as a change of rites of passage, this one changes its meaning and it opens up a great amount of conversation.
^M01:10:01
So, I drew this as an interpretation. If I drew this is that interpretation? If I break it, I'm saying something different. Then I begin to chew it. I'm changing this minute. So, the point I'm trying to make, and I tried to use this shoe as an example, is to say that, you see, I tried to use the analogies that people can relate to tests, tests, tests, or library and library, because it's a knowledge system that begins to talk. I can use this to pray that God is going to give you long life. I even had incantations. I changed the meaning. It become something else, so I will talk more one on one. The language questions has always come up forever. It will always come up. So, there are countries on the ten million. There are actually countries six million people who use their language. Czech Republic, Sweden, the state of Israel. [inaudible] you asked me the question. Are you there? They use their language to [inaudible] for instance, right? They are bigger than all these countries that I just mentioned. And there's a dozen countries, there's just ten million people who use their language. 
^M01:11:59
^M01:12:05
Or valley of the development of Hebrew language [inaudible]. For the best example the Africana in South Africa. They were so successful. That's -- I do not know [inaudible] African [inaudible] used until current challenges. They created this language in South Africa, they insisted on using it. Part of what led to the Soviet uprising for those of you who are alive then. Was because they want to impose Africana. And sold it to black people and it led to a major crisis. So, it's actually not true that you cannot take a language and turn it into a academic project or use it in school. One of the projects that was averted was [inaudible] she mentioned in which we actually started this. [inaudible] language of education from elementary school. Who started it? And it worked. Unfortunately today, you now have Africans who cannot speak African languages. You have [inaudible] who cannot use the language. The tragedy is they are not good in English either. It's not that simply a good [inaudible]. And if you look at [inaudible] like [inaudible] well, it is the grand [inaudible] language that makes a Chevy. If you take off the Hebrew language from there, what is -- what are you going to have? So, the tremendous advantages that are located in this language, right? We begin to lose it by the, so I don't like to use myself an example. When I wrote my memoirs, two of them in French, I wrote it in what you would call [inaudible] English. They could not find a copy editor, it's not going to work. And the publisher said, "And it became very successful.  Okay, okay. We will not dub your English." And each [inaudible] the memoir they asked me questions. There's a line I started by saying, "A frog would not know that there are two worlds unless it jumps into hot water." A student comes to me and said, "Why would a frog jumps into hot water? Is it stupid?" But as a language, if I say, what is after six is more than seven. Nobody in England can say that because it's not possible for him or for her to ever think that way. What is six after seven, is an organic way of talking and it's connected to a specific location. And what is after six after seven, as small as it is, is a conversation that you and I can stay here until tomorrow to be discussing. You can actually, in Africa universities, write [inaudible] in [inaudible]. That is within your reparations to formulate. You don't need any stand-up power to validate it. It wasn't like the time when I was drinking sea level. That they had to take my scripts to the west of London. That moment is gone because they now, they can't be blaming thing on other people. They [inaudible] of themselves and say, "We want you to write your PhD in [inaudible] of Nigeria in [inaudible]." Nobody can stop them. They are the one validating that degree and making use of it within the national boundaries. And they'll be surprised that that person can work elsewhere. So, I think we've been very careless in that regard. Generally, we have been very careless and we have to rethink the very process. You can -- the very fact that you use your languages as a [inaudible] in Germany or in France does not mean don't assess other languages. I'm actually much better in [inaudible] than in English because that was my generation, that's how we went to school. And then at some point my grandmother also forced me to learn Arabic. So, this language issue is a project of state policy and it's one we have to seriously think about. The first question, yes, yes. Can you begin to demystify this object over time? That's what morality and western science will move you towards. But be in mind that those who plan education system for you and those who shape the knowledge system can also create agencies in the other direction. You know they can do that. And what they say. When I was at the age of ten, I quoted all the classics in [inaudible]. Indeed, I wrote my first play at the age of 12. Why? Because the set of this elaborate drama competition, [inaudible] competition across a big region. And they were asking us to compete and we're competing. That's how my interest in language and performances developed. Years later, when I wrote a play and I was looking for people to act it, I was shocked that getting people to act was very difficult. You know why? Because they are not -- they are no longer organically connected to acting as a day to day practice as I was as a child. In which, that play that we are doing was what we later learned in the U.S. it will be performance. I come from Ibadan, and if you have been to it you will know Ibadan. You cannot live in my city without an extensive infrastructure of language. And we pride ourselves in the ability to create instant poems to abuse people. You just have to master it, you just have to master it and it's very intricate. And as you begin to do that, by the time anybody sets up a chair there, you already have people that are already so brilliant and so good in acting that you don't have to be spending so much time training them. And you see how Nollywood, which is the third largest movie industry in the world, is bringing back some of these things. Bringing back some of these things. We -- I think it's tragic to lose them. It's very tragic. [inaudible] history in the western academy follows a formative definition.
^M01:20:02
So, which we give a degree and that formal definition, it will say that the definition of [inaudible]. First of all, any project of translation is very risky. If I say [inaudible] you are making a big mistake. It doesn't work like that. If I say character and you say [inaudible], if I say head. So, projects of translations are very problematic because a component of what [inaudible] will call [inaudible] is much broader than what we call history to every university degree. Because when you break it down, it's called chains metaphysical world. The environment, they don't separate them. Trees and human beings can be living together. Stories of the elephants and human beings can be combined and they combine them with issues of memory and issues of [inaudible]. So, the way they define it, you have to fracture it into various disciplines because it's not just history, it'll include connectings that we're now starting. And finally, your dreams and what that you all told you, well, we have to keep dreaming. She's been asking me to stop and I will wait behind and check more questions.
>> Angel Batiste: I'm sorry that we have to end our program at this point, but again, please join me in thanking Dr. Falola for his presentation. I'd also like to invite you in our conference room. We have a small display of some of the works of Dr. Falola, so please join us in the conference room and perhaps we can continue conversations there. Thank you.
>> Automated: This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us as L-O-C dot gov.