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Date: 07 Nov 2000 00:00:00 GMT
Subject: Re: In response to an attack
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Subject: Re: In response to an attack
>From: "Amanda Vincent" tbom@globalnet.co.uk
>Date: 11/6/00 7:59 PM EST
>Message-id: <8u4vr4$5q8$1@gxsn.com>
>
>
>>Let me add the following: anyone that takes up residence in the Academy as
>an
>>anthropologist or Africanist, essaying forth to "study" Africans and ATR,
>who
>>then claims to have become part of that which he studies, i.e. to become an
>>initiated priest, is to me prima facie a fraud.
>
>This is a nonsense. Some old-school anthropologists may question the ability
>of the practitioner's ability to be objective, but participant observation
>has long been regarded as an important and respected methodology in
>anthropology and its off shoots. Much of the finest work in Orisha religion
>and arts has been produced by practitioners with varying degrees of
>initiation: William Bascom, Wande Abimbola, Pierre Verger, Robert Farris
>Thompson, Henry Drewell, and the list goes on.
You misread me completely. My point of reference is not any old-school
orthodoxy of the Academy, rather it is with those that the Academy presumes to
make a subject of study. I have no problem with what you call "participant
observation". For example, I happen to know Wande Abimbola personally, and
happen to know also that he's not an anthropologist. His field in the Academy
is literature, and his writings about Ifa are based, not on anthropological
research, but on a lifetime of experience with it; he grew up with it, and
started his studies as a babalawo at the age of seven. Initiation was not part
of his study design, as it presumptively appears to be for anthropologists and
"ethnographers", for whom research is the goal and initiation mere means. It is
the latter I would charge to be prima facie frauds. Not, mind you, in the sense
that the facts that they ultimately harvest and report are worthless, but in
the sense that they are lacking in personal integrity. For if initiation is
undertaken, not for its own sake and because of a calling, but to facilitate a
research project, somebody is lying to somebody.
By the way, it highly irritates me that people such as Bascom would go to
Africa, tape recorder in hand, and end up owning copyright to verses of the
sacred text of the Yoruba.
>But beyond that, when it
>comes down to it, it is the person who is important. Initiates have done
>poor work, and scholars who are "outsiders" have done good work. There are
>many factors which make for fine academic work.
>
>To call Eoghan a fraud on this basis (aside from the rest of that character
>assassination) is unfounded and unfair.
I have reached the conclusion that Eoghan is not a true friend of Africa,
Africans, or ATR, for various reasons which I have outlined. The present
reason, as I said, provides prima facie grounds to suspect opportunistic
motives, i.e. fraud. I quite concede that in individual cases, it is possible
that the motive for initiation may be quite pure, and the "research benefits"
only a secondary gain. In this case, however, it is clear to me that, in
reaching always, in defiance of logic and the evidence, to non-African sources
to explain African accomplishment, in making an equation between sorcery and
priesthood in ATR, and for other reasons, that Eoghan really does not hold
Africans or ATR in very high regard.
The fact that he is both an initiate
>and a scholar speaks of his total commitment to his faith and should command
>the appropriate respect.
The fact that he is both an initiate and a scholar may also speak to a certain
opportunism, desire to open doors, build academic empire, etc. I am not a total
cynic, but I do connect dots, and I see what I see.
>Amanda
Peace,
Grisso
"The President of a prestigious university, convinced of the Master's mystical
experience, wanted to make him head of the Theology Department.
He approached the chief disciple with this proposal. The disciple said, "The
Master emphasizes _being_ enlightened, not teaching enlightenment."
"Would that prevent him from being head of the Department of Theology?"
"As much as it would prevent an elephant from being head of the Department
of Zoology."
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