ENGAGING WITH AND EXPANDING THE CURRENT UNDERSTANDING OF ADINKRA


There is much more to the Adinkra symbols than is explicated in the expositions I have seen so far.. Their forms suggest possibilities for a broader range of symbolic associations than is conventionally attributed to them?

What do I mean by the idea that their form suggests possibilities for a broader range of symbolic associations than is conventionally attributed to them?

This is due to two reasons. These are their design patterns and the symbolic values attributed to them.

Their design patterns include their non-representational shapes that often do not evoke any shapes that can be found in nature, their composition in terms of stark elementary colours, black and white, the dynamism evoked by their spare but strongly defined use of lines, curves, circles and spirals.

These design elements indicate an iconographic language that is capable of evoking associations without limiting the mind to particular ideas suggested by representations that are closer to natural forms or even to other well known symbols. This could facilitate the mind contemplating the Adinkra motifs ranging freely over vast evocative and associational spaces without being hampered by specific associational correlatives coming from iconographic and symbolic particularities. The mind is freer to land when it chooses, to identify with particular associations it chooses rather than be fixed to particular associations.

The second reason-the symbolic associations already attributed to them:

They all represent particular values centred on positive social conceptions. Some of these ideas involve social relations among members of a community, such as .Others involve metaphysical conceptions related to the nature of ultimate reality, a reality at times understood in what looks like a theistic sense, as described in Danquah's Akan Doctrine of God. I wonder, though, about the level of elaboration of these ideas. One needs to examine studies of Akan art and thought to find this out.

But to clarify this train of thought, I need to explore central texts on Akan art and thought to examine this. But even if the level of elaboration is not significantly involved, that minimalist level of ideational development could evoke a recognition of the need to leave the visual motif free to engage the mind of the respondent without a wall of commentary blocking a free flow of ideas.

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