The Man Question in Ifá 1
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NOTES Introduction: Exhuming Subjugated Knowledge and Liberating Marginalized Epistemes 1 . Anibal Quijano, “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality,” Cultural Studies 21, no. 2/3 (March/May 2007): 169. 2 . Maria Lugones, “Hetrosexualism and the Colonial Modern Gender System,” Hypatia 22, no. 1 (Winter 2007): 186. 3 . Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). 4 . Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Coloniality of Power in Postcolonial Africa. Myths of Decolonization (Dakar, Sengal: Codesria, 2013), 52. 5 . Ibid., 16. 6 . New York Times , February 3, 2015. 7 . Ifi Amadiume, Re-inventing Africa Matriarchy, Religion, and Culture (London: Zed Books, 1997), 23. 8 . Maxwell Owusu, “Toward an African Critique of African Ethnography: The Usefulness of the Useless,” in Reclaiming the Human Sciences and Humanities through African Perspectives , ed. H. Lauer and Kofi Anyidoho (Accra, Ghana: Sub-Saharan Publishers), 90. 1 Divining Knowledge: The Man Question in Ifá 1 . Throughout the text, although I refer to Yor ù b á people, my primary focus ̀ is on the history and culture Ọ y ọ́ -Yor ù b á , which is a dominant subgroup of the nationality. That said, it should be noted that those cultural specificities were more pronounced before the sweeping changes that occurred in civil war and in the post-nineteenth-century periods. Language is also central to this study, and my engagement is with standard Yorù b á language, which ̀ ̀ is said to have privileged the Ọ y ọ́ dialect. The term “ Ọ y ọ́ -Yor ù b á ” covers ̀ many towns and communities that were at the center of Ọ y ọ́ Empire. Today many of those towns are spread through many Yor ù b á states in Nigeria. ̀ They include Ibadan, Ọ y ọ́ , Ogbomoso, Iwo, Iseyin, Ilorin Offa, Osogbo, Okuku, and Ejigbo. 222 NOTES 2 . See Oy è r ó nk ẹ́ Oy ě w ù m í , The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997). 3 . Adefisoye Oyesakin, “The Image of Women in If á Literary Corpus,” Nigeria Magazine 141 (1982). 4 . Wande Abimbola, “Images of Women in the If á Literary Corpus,” Annals of the New York Academy of Science 810, no. 1 (1997). 5 . Some Western feminist scholars such as Nancy Dowd have used the concept “man question” to analyze aspects of male disadvantage in the United States. N. E. Dowd, The Man Question: Male Subordination and Privilege (New York: New York University Press, 2010). But my own usage here is to encapsulate ideas of male dominance and male privilege that have come to define soci- eties around the globe especially following European and American con- quest. Thus in a comparative frame, the question in the “woman question” is one of subordination; the question in man question as I apply it to Yor ù b á society and discourses is one of dominance. 6 . Indeed today notions of masculinity and femininity exist in the society but they are legitimated by quotations from the Bible or Q’uran without any awareness that these religions did not originate from the society. 7 . Oyě w ù m í , The Invention of Women . 8 . Ad é l é k è Ad éẹ̀ k ó ,̣ “‘Writing’ and ‘Reference’ in If á Divination Chants,” Oral Tradition 25, no. 2 (2010): 284. 9 . See Karin Barber, I Could Speak until Tomorrow: Or í k ì , Women, and the Past in a Yor ù b á Town (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991); Ad éẹ̀ k ó ,̣ “‘Writing’ and ‘Reference’ in If á Divination Chants.” For example, argu- ment made that the elevation of Ifá over other kinds of divination is tied up with male privilege and the perception that it is a male province. 10 . William R. Bascom, Sixteen Cowries: Yor ù b á Divination from Africa to the New World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 10. 11 . Abimbola, “Images of Women in the If á Literary Corpus,” 86. 12 . This section includes excerpts from my chapter “Decolonizing the Intellectual and the Quotidian,” in Gender Epistemologies in Africa: Gendering Traditions, Spaces, Social Institutions and Identities (Palgrave, 2011). 13 . The remaining polities such as Ajase fell under French jurisdiction and became part of the French colony of Dahomey. 14 . See Oy ě w ù m í , The Invention of Women, Chapter 4 for a detailed account of male dominant colonial policies and practices. 15 . See Abimbola, “Images of Women in the If á Literary Corpus.” 16 . Wande Abimbola, If á : An Exposition of If á Literary Corpus (Ibadan: Oxford University Press, 1976), 61. 17 . Ibid. 18 . Ibid., 242. 19 . Argument made that the elevation of If á over other kinds of divination is tied up with male privilege and the perception that it is a male province. 20 . William R. Bascom, If á Divination: Communication between Gods and Men in West Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 81. NOTES 223 21 . See Michelle and Louise Lamphere Rosaldo, eds., Women, Culture, and Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974). 22 . Bascom, If á Divination , 91. 23 . Cited in ibid. 24 . See Oyě w ù m í , The Invention of Women , 76. 25 . J. D. Y. Peel, “Gender in Yor ù b á Religious Change,” Journal of Religion in Africa 32, no. 2 (2002): 149. 26 . Bascom, Sixteen Cowries , 3. In this regard also, it is important to note that Bertha, Bascom’s wife, was born and raised in Cuba. 27 . Quoted in Bascom, If á Divination , 13. 28 . P. B. Bouche, Sept Ans En Afrique Occidentale: La C ô te Des Esclaves Et Le Dahomey (Paris: E. Plon Nourrit, 1885), 120. 29 . Malidoma Patrice Somé , Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman (New York: Penguin, 1995), 163. 30 . Ad éẹ̀ k ó ,̣ “‘Writing’ and ‘Reference’ in If á Divination Chants,” 284. 31 . Peel, “Gender in Yor ù b á Religious Change,” 147. 32 . Oyeronke Olajubu, Women in the Yorù b á Religious Sphere (Albany: State University Press of New York, 2003), 119. 33 . Ibid. 34 . Bascom, Sixteen Cowries , 12. 35 . Ad éẹ̀ k ó ,̣ “‘Writing’ and ‘Reference’ in If á Divination Chants,” 287. 36 . Barber, I Could Speak until Tomorrow , 289. 37 . Abimbola, If á : An Exposition of If á Literary Corpus , 14. 38 . Wande Abimbola and I. Miller, If á Will Mend Our Broken World: Thoughts on Yor ù b á Religion and Culture in Africa and the Diaspora (Roxbury: Aim Books, 1997), 86–87. 39 . Bernard Maupoil, La G é omancie À L’ancienne C ô te Des Esclaves (Paris: Institut d’ethnologie, 1943), 153–154. 40 . Barber, I Could Speak until Tomorrow , 103. 41 . Olajubu, Women in the Yor ù b á Religious Sphere , 115. 42 . Interview of Chief Akalaifa, babalawo in Ogbomoso, on July 17, 2008. Her name was Ajeje and her story was well known in the town. Ajeje is said to have originated in Ilorin, which is 35 miles from Ogbomoso. She had set- tled in the town in the 1960s following a Muslim-inspired violent purge of identifiable practitioners of indigenous religion who were regarded as hea- thens and were not going to be tolerated in a town that sought to inscribe a Muslim identity. I have not seen any documentation in scholarship or popular press on religious riots in Ilorin that may have led to the fleeing of such diviners from the town. 43 . See a discussion of the gendering of Yor ù b á language and its implications in Oyě w ù m í , The Invention of Women , Chapter 5. 44 . Barber, I Could Speak until Tomorrow , 289. 45 . T. J. Bowen, Central Africa: Adventures and Missionary Labors in Several Countries in the Interior of Africa, from 1849 to 1856 (Charleston, SC: Southern Baptist Publication Society, 1857), 317. 46 . Bascom, If á Divination , 23. 224 NOTES 47 . Ibid. 48 . Oy ě w ù m í , The Invention of Women ; Oy è r ó nk ẹ́ Oy ě w ù m í , “Colonizing Bodies and Minds: Gender and Colonialism,” in Postcolonialisms: An Anthology of Cultural Theory and Criticism , ed. Gaurav and Supriya Nair Desai (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2005). ́ ́ 49 . D. O. Ogungbile, “ ẸẸ R ì nd í nl ó g ú n: The Seeing Eyes of Sacred Shells and ̀ Stones,” in ỌṢ Un across the Waters: A Yor ù B á Goddess in Africa and the Americas, ed. Joseph M. and Mei-Mei Sanford Murphy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001). 50 . Bascom, Sixteen Cowries , 3. 51 . Ibid., 4. 52 . Ibid., 3. ́ ́ 53 . Ogungbile, “ ẸẸ R ì nd í nl ó g ú n,” 191. 54 . Ibid., 196. 55 . Bascom, Sixteen Cowries , 10. 56 . Ibid., 21. 57 . What is sacrifice? See Omosade J. Awolalu, Yor ù b á Beliefs and Sacrificial Rites (London: Longman, 1979). 58 . Bascom, Sixteen Cowries , 11. 59 . Niyi. F. Akinnaso, “Bourdieu and the Diviner: Knowledge and Symbolic Power in Yor ù b á Divination,” in The Pursuit of Certainty: Religious and Cultural Formulations , ed. Wendy James (London: Routledge, 1995), 238. ̀ 60 . Wande Abimbola, “The Bag of Wisdom: Ọ Ṣ Un and the Origins of Ifá ̀ Divination,” in ỌṢ un across the Waters: A Yor ù b á Goddess in Africa and the Americans , ed. Joseph M. and Mei-Mei Sanford Murphy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 150. 61 . On July 20, 2009. ́ ́ 62 . Ogungbile, “ ẸẸ R ì nd í nl ó g ú n,” 96. 63 . Abimbola, “The Bag of Wisdom,” 141; my emphasis.