An Ethos of Transdisciplinarity: Conversations with Toyin Falola

by Sanya Osha

Overview

Toyin Falola’s astounding intellectual production must be one of the mysteries in the intellectual world. It has transcended the confined world of historical research into broader horizons that include the role of the public intellectual. The present study would undertake a rigorous analysis of the origins, continuities and discontinuities of this transformation. This means we have to recast the debates regarding who is a public intellectual from a multiplicity of discursive situations and historical and cultural contexts. We have to employ methodological parallels from North Atlantic intellectual traditions. How did the role of the public intellectual emerge in the first place in world intellectual history? Addressing this question would enrich this research endeavour immensely.
In interrogating comparative discursive formations, we shall re-evaluate the roles, functions and achievements of continental intellectuals such as Betrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Andre Malraux, Albert Camus, Michel Foucault, Edward Said, Wole Soyinka and Pierre Bourdieu. Again, this discursive element will give this study a global appeal and range.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781839993213
Publisher:	Anthem Press
Publication date:	04/01/2025
Series:	Anthem Africology Series , #1
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	194
File size:	473 KB

About the Author

Sanya Osha is the author of several works of scholarship on philosophy, politics, and cultural anthropology. Since 2002, he has been on the Editorial Board of Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy/Revue Africaine de Philosophie. His books include Kwasi Wiredu and Beyond: The Text, Writing and Thought in Africa (2005), Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Shadow: Politics, Nationalism and the Ogoni Protest Movement (2007), Postethnophilosophy (2011), African Postcolonial Modernity: Informal Subjectivities and the Democratic Consensus (2014), and Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Shadow (Expanded Edition): Politics, Nationalism and the Ogoni Protest Movement (2021). Other major publications include, Truth in Politics (2004), co-edited with J. P Salazar and W. van Binsbergen, and African Feminisms (2006) as editor. He is a fellow of the African Studies Centre, Leiden, the Netherlands, and a research associate of ZMO Berlin, Germany.

Table of Contents

Part 1: A Long Introduction Divided into Several Segments; Introduction; The Yoruba: Falola’s Tactile Ethnic Home; Toyin Falola; Public Engagement and an Exercise ; in Pan-Africanism; Scholarship of Transdisciplinarity and Interculturality; The Significance of Orisa; Unfinished Business; Bibliography; Part 2: An interview section; Index

Editorial Reviews

The Johannesburg Review

 “An Ethos of Transdisciplinarity: Conversations with Toyin Falola is an extraordinary exploration of the profound impact of transdisciplinary thinking in reshaping the boundaries of knowledge. Through engaging and reflective conversations, this book delves into the intellectual legacy of Toyin Falola, a scholar whose work transcends traditional academic silos. It is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the power of integrative scholarship in addressing complex global challenges. Insightful and inspiring, it highlights the transformative potential of bridging disciplines to create meaningful change in academia and beyond.” —Daphne M. Cooper, Interim Chairperson, Department of History and Political Science; Associate Professor of Political Science, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, USA.

“Osha’s insightful exploration of Toyin Falola’s intellectual contributions brilliantly illustrates the importance of convivial scholarship and its profound impact on African studies. This book is essential for anyone interested in collaborative, inclusive knowledge production and the future of knowledge creation.” —Francis B. Nyamnjoh, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cape Town, USA.

“Sanya Osha’s detailed, three-dimensional analysis of Toyin Falola’s epistemic preoccupation with the idea of Africa is a welcome addition to the body of knowledge. This robust life-writing engagement shows us the importance of recognising the centrality of agency and selflessness in the process of advancing the African worldview.” —Babátúndé Fágbàyíb.ó́, Professor of International Law, University of Pretoria, South Africa.

“Relying on an interview with Prof. Toyin Falola, this book is a fantastic attempt to capture Falola’s exceptional multi, inter, and transdisciplinary approaches to knowledge production.” —Prof. Serges Kamga, Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of the Free State, South Africa.

“This is fascinating reading, as we follow two outstandingly bright and creative academic African thinkers—both Yoruba, different generations—in dialogue with each other. Sanya Osha, philosopher, novelist, and engaged thinker, who has long been based in South Africa, interviews Toyin Falola, Africa’s probably the most well-known and surely the most productive historian, who has long been based in the United States and published on almost all kinds of aspects of social life in Africa. Africa’s rich intellectual culture is one central topic, and as we are listening (i.e., reading) in to the conversations between these two lucid minds, we benefit from their mastery of many diverse subfields such as popular music (e.g., Fela Kuti) and religion (e.g., orisa deities and divination), and a sense emerges of the vast connections and possibilities that African intellectual cultures express, and may guide us to understand, toward an interconnected whole that “being African” and “being human” is embedded in. This, indeed, needs to be understood across and beyond disciplines.”—Kai Kresse, Vice Director Research, Leibniz-Zentrum Moder ner Orient, Berlin, Germany.

From the Publisher