Names of Nigerian imaginative writers and scholars of Nigerian literature constitute a cap worn by a writer and scholar, evoking embodiment of the creative values represented by that expressive world, as he wears a necklace indicating the titles of those books in which he explores his earliest journeys to becoming who he is, the matrix in which he is shaped by the convergence of self and circumstance, the constellation of possibility from which each moment is born, the imaginative intelligence of history beyond full human understanding even as it is partly constructed by human beings.

BOOK REVIEW: Toyin Falola’s Decolonizing African Studies: Knowledge Production, Agency, And Voice

Verbal creativities bring to life imaginative worlds, suggesting conjunctions between bodies of knowledge, between  modes of thought and expression,  generating new possibilities beyond their constituents, a dazzling web of possibilities configured by the traveller between history and literature, art and economics, self and culture, amongst other configurations constituting the journey of African humanity from remotest origins to international settling across the seas.

On account of its infinitely stimulating power, all creativity opens itself to endless examination, recreation and inspiration of new creativity, particularly such a diversely creative complex as that developed by polymathic scholar and writer Toyin Falola.

 Falola is one of the most prolific scholars ever, at any point in history, in any culture, from the earlier achievements of the ancient Greeks to Asia and the Islamic world, to Europe, North America, South America, other continents, and Africa in its older oral and newer written traditions.

The multidisciplinary range of Falola’s  work is eclipsed perhaps, only by such scholars at the foundations of cognitive history as Aristotle, and such culturally foundational cognitive  complexes as the correlative African systems represented by the Yoruba origin Ifa, the Igbo Afa and the Dahomean Fa, among others, in their integration of multidisciplinary breadth represented by visual and performative arts, spirituality, philosophy and other disciplines, within a vast literary system organized in terms of a mathematical structure, a cognitive complex that is one of Falola’s inspirations.

READ ALSO: African Studies As A Matrix For Totalistic Knowledge: Exploring Toyin Falola’s Polymathic Creativity  In Relation To His Discussion Of Aesthetics In Decolonizing African Studies

Those older multidisciplinary architectures may surpass Falola’s work in the stage it has reached so far, in the older systems’ constitution of cognitive formations, establishing or consolidating particular styles of thought and expression at the foundations of the knowledge worlds of specific and related civilizations, later expanding into a global scope.

Those earlier achievements do not equal, however, the cultural breadth of Falola’s creativity, strategic for speaking to humanity in its expanding growth in multicultural and cosmopolitan interpenetration, his own inventiveness emerging within the richer information spaces of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The older accomplishments also do not match Falola’s expressive range, as his works cover every aspect of African Studies, except the sciences, as well as being strong in poetry in Yoruba and English as well as autobiography, evident in books embodying his masterly use of the expository and analytical essay, short essays, long essays,essay/poetry combinations and interlinked book chapters, in sole written, co-authored and edited books and social media publications.

His work also covers a broad range of scholarly organization,  running various book series with different publishers, conducting  interviews with diverse prominent personalities, framed by his rich overviews of their achievements, along with  organizing conferences on myriad subjects in African Studies and creating and running a very rich social media platform on continental and Diaspora African and world affairs, the USAAfrica Dialogue Series Google group, publication  which ensures high Internet and thereby global visibility on account of the platform’s strong online presence.

Falola’s productivity has long outstripped the various essay and book length assessments of his work, and will always do so as long as he maintains his current escalating trajectory of productivity, expanding in terms of disciplinary range and depth and originality of treatment of the subjects he addresses.

 My goal is that of critically engaging his work as it unfolds, examining its strengths and limitations, in relation to the total complex of his  productivity as my understanding of it develops, in dialogue with a multidisciplinary and multicultural frame of knowledge, possibly developing new structures of understanding  from these explorations and sharing these initiatives on the uniquely democratic space represented by social media, and possibly other platforms, such as books, one approach to expanding the impact of Falola’s work beyond its accustomed academic audiences.

.Adepoju, an independent scholar in Lagos researches  and publishes  on the polymathic work of Falola as  one of the projects  he is working on.