EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
This work came into my hands on account of my interest in Classical African cognitive processes and systems. I have long been fascinated by the approaches to developing, managing and using ideas developed by people on the African continent. It is likely to be the fact that I have a number of blogs on this subject that led the author to contact me and urge me to assist with editing his work and getting it published. I was reluctant at first, since I have quite a significant workload, on account of the fact that I am doing a PhD on which I am behind in strategic areas.
I was struck however, by the innovative character of the work and the range of its applicability to various areas of knowledge. This led me to take up the project. The book you hold in your hands is the first effort known to me to explore in depth that indicates its potential wealth of ideas one symbol from an ancient and yet contemporarily vibrant system of knowledge known as Adinkra. The system is made up of hundreds of patterns of visual designs, each with a name of its own and a distinctive symbolic significance. This symbolic value is at times associated with a proverb and a story that illustrates this symbolism. The system, therefore, integrates the visual arts and literature, and in some cases, mathematics, on account of the mathematical forms of some of the designs. In focusing on only one symbol, although allowing his work to be illuminated by/ giving an overview of his responses to the system as whole, the author suggests the wealth of possibilities that could be realised through an exploration of the other symbols, thereby opening up a vast field of possibilities of knowledge stimulated by reflection on these symbols.
Under the influence of the evocative power of the designs, the author explores the nature of being. The designs become, therefore, a vehicle, a chariot, a craft, through which the author moves beyond the original meanings of the symbol to explore a broad range of issues. The issues explored, and the manner in which this is done makes the work an expression of what the author describes as the genius of some examples of Classical African cognitive systems in that it simultaneous draws on the visual art of Adinkra, while exploring its mathematical forms, relating these to questions in the contemporary sciences, and deploys the literary forms of the prose poem and the short story, while ranging over terrain that evokes religious and philosophical topography. The unity of the work emerges from the fact that all its explorations over various disciplines begin from and return to the author’s meditations on the Adinkra symbol of Kuntunkantan.
The Adinkra system was developed in the Akan nation in West Africa, the members of which now belong to the state of Ghana. A number of claims exist as to the origin of the system but none of these seems to be conclusive. The designs were originally used as textile designs for clothes worn at funerals. The purpose of this seems to have been to commemorate or express ideas related to relationships between life and death. Danquah describes Adinkra as representing the understating the deceased person takes with them to the world beyond, being an expression of the dominant perspective of the world in Akan society which believed in life after death.
It has, in contemporary times, spread to the use of giving aesthetic value to textiles used in all kinds of occasions, to architecture, and in the cyber age, has spread beyond Ghana to become very visible, particularly in North America, in its use in as a source in the striking designs of various websites, as in the site of Stanford University Library’s African Resources at and in
It is also used in jewellery, as is evident from the designs of at as well as in body art, as represented by the web site of an African-American who inscribes the symbols on his arm to evoke in memory the values they represent. The capacity of Adinkra to transcend geography is evoked by his description of his uncle’s comments, who, moved by his nephew’s Adinkra tattoos, exclaimed, using the African-American transformation of a pejorative expression at times directed at people of African descent “This nigger aint never been to Africa, and yet he has all this shit on his arm”. The symbols are used both within and without a context that relates them to an effort to identify explicitly with the culture from which they came.
Some strange issues emerge in relation to this work that make more intriguing the author’s claims about certain arcane qualities of Adinkra and other African cognitive systems he relates them with. The author frames his explorations of the Adinkra symbol in relation to theses puzzling issues. The character of theses questions as they are presented by the author and developed in my comments on them within the work imbue the work with a particular poignance and mystery These issues are explored in the letters I wrote to the online/Internet discussion group of the Wole Soyinka Society, where I first made public the information I had received about this work. As a group centred on the questions relating to the life and work of the great African man of letters and artist, whose was is centred on exploring both the endogenous and the universal significance of African cognitive systems, and which deals with questions of cognitive forms that cannot be completely accounted for in terms of the contemporary dominant ways of understanding the world, I felt this group was a useful platform to express the information I was receiving any my puzzlement about it. These puzzling issues centre on the question of the existence of the author. I will not press this further right now, but urge the reader to see those letters which I have interspersed within the main body of the text, after each chapter. I have done this partly because these letters were my responses to the text as I received it one chapter after another but because I want to suggest something of the excitement which the text in relation to the puzzling issues surrounding the author, evoked in me. I leave the reader to judge for themselves on the questions raised by those issues.
The work proceeds through a range of expressive forms: philosophical analysis, mathematical exposition, exploration, religious contemplation, prose poetry, short stories, letters, and images of the particular Adinkra symbol, Kuntunkantan, which the author focuses on. All these forms are used as vehicles in pursuing the author’s overriding aim, an exploration of the nature of being through mediations on the Adinkra symbol. The reader can read the work through, moving from one chapter to another, or begin and continue with any chapter of their choice, although the first chapter sets the purpose and tone of the work, or even focus on any of the expressive from the work uses. A comprehensive appreciation, however, comes from reading the entire work from the beginning to the end.
I was struck however, by the innovative character of the work and the range of its applicability to various areas of knowledge. This led me to take up the project. The book you hold in your hands is the first effort known to me to explore in depth that indicates its potential wealth of ideas one symbol from an ancient and yet contemporarily vibrant system of knowledge known as Adinkra. The system is made up of hundreds of patterns of visual designs, each with a name of its own and a distinctive symbolic significance. This symbolic value is at times associated with a proverb and a story that illustrates this symbolism. The system, therefore, integrates the visual arts and literature, and in some cases, mathematics, on account of the mathematical forms of some of the designs. In focusing on only one symbol, although allowing his work to be illuminated by/ giving an overview of his responses to the system as whole, the author suggests the wealth of possibilities that could be realised through an exploration of the other symbols, thereby opening up a vast field of possibilities of knowledge stimulated by reflection on these symbols.
Under the influence of the evocative power of the designs, the author explores the nature of being. The designs become, therefore, a vehicle, a chariot, a craft, through which the author moves beyond the original meanings of the symbol to explore a broad range of issues. The issues explored, and the manner in which this is done makes the work an expression of what the author describes as the genius of some examples of Classical African cognitive systems in that it simultaneous draws on the visual art of Adinkra, while exploring its mathematical forms, relating these to questions in the contemporary sciences, and deploys the literary forms of the prose poem and the short story, while ranging over terrain that evokes religious and philosophical topography. The unity of the work emerges from the fact that all its explorations over various disciplines begin from and return to the author’s meditations on the Adinkra symbol of Kuntunkantan.
The Adinkra system was developed in the Akan nation in West Africa, the members of which now belong to the state of Ghana. A number of claims exist as to the origin of the system but none of these seems to be conclusive. The designs were originally used as textile designs for clothes worn at funerals. The purpose of this seems to have been to commemorate or express ideas related to relationships between life and death. Danquah describes Adinkra as representing the understating the deceased person takes with them to the world beyond, being an expression of the dominant perspective of the world in Akan society which believed in life after death.
It has, in contemporary times, spread to the use of giving aesthetic value to textiles used in all kinds of occasions, to architecture, and in the cyber age, has spread beyond Ghana to become very visible, particularly in North America, in its use in as a source in the striking designs of various websites, as in the site of Stanford University Library’s African Resources at and in
It is also used in jewellery, as is evident from the designs of at as well as in body art, as represented by the web site of an African-American who inscribes the symbols on his arm to evoke in memory the values they represent. The capacity of Adinkra to transcend geography is evoked by his description of his uncle’s comments, who, moved by his nephew’s Adinkra tattoos, exclaimed, using the African-American transformation of a pejorative expression at times directed at people of African descent “This nigger aint never been to Africa, and yet he has all this shit on his arm”. The symbols are used both within and without a context that relates them to an effort to identify explicitly with the culture from which they came.
Some strange issues emerge in relation to this work that make more intriguing the author’s claims about certain arcane qualities of Adinkra and other African cognitive systems he relates them with. The author frames his explorations of the Adinkra symbol in relation to theses puzzling issues. The character of theses questions as they are presented by the author and developed in my comments on them within the work imbue the work with a particular poignance and mystery These issues are explored in the letters I wrote to the online/Internet discussion group of the Wole Soyinka Society, where I first made public the information I had received about this work. As a group centred on the questions relating to the life and work of the great African man of letters and artist, whose was is centred on exploring both the endogenous and the universal significance of African cognitive systems, and which deals with questions of cognitive forms that cannot be completely accounted for in terms of the contemporary dominant ways of understanding the world, I felt this group was a useful platform to express the information I was receiving any my puzzlement about it. These puzzling issues centre on the question of the existence of the author. I will not press this further right now, but urge the reader to see those letters which I have interspersed within the main body of the text, after each chapter. I have done this partly because these letters were my responses to the text as I received it one chapter after another but because I want to suggest something of the excitement which the text in relation to the puzzling issues surrounding the author, evoked in me. I leave the reader to judge for themselves on the questions raised by those issues.
The work proceeds through a range of expressive forms: philosophical analysis, mathematical exposition, exploration, religious contemplation, prose poetry, short stories, letters, and images of the particular Adinkra symbol, Kuntunkantan, which the author focuses on. All these forms are used as vehicles in pursuing the author’s overriding aim, an exploration of the nature of being through mediations on the Adinkra symbol. The reader can read the work through, moving from one chapter to another, or begin and continue with any chapter of their choice, although the first chapter sets the purpose and tone of the work, or even focus on any of the expressive from the work uses. A comprehensive appreciation, however, comes from reading the entire work from the beginning to the end.
Comments