"Knowledges and Epistemologies: Professor Abimbola Adesoji and His 'The Politics of History'" - by SMB Sesan Michael Johnson

#ProfAbimbolaAdesoji #OAU #InauguralLecture

"Knowledges and Epistemologies: Professor Abimbola Adesoji and His 'The Politics of History'" - by SMB Sesan Michael Johnson

"A man can only attain knowledge with the help of those who possess it … One must learn from him who knows”-- G. I. Gurdjieff (c. 1866-1949) 

Abimbola Adesoji, an OAU professor of History and Howard Zinn (1922-2010) who was a historian, playwright, and activist remind me of the profundity, intentionality and complicatedness inherent in theme such as THE POLITICS OF HISTORY.

Drawing binaries and corollaries from the works of these two great historians; I begin to wonder if Adesoji will adopt Zinn's radical approach to historiography and the writing of history in his Inaugural Lecture, thereby providing a revisionist interpretation of the historian's roles in the making of a society and what the society thinks of its history. Markedly, History just like the Media is a variant of the 'technology of knowledge' use and abuse to control power and the people in every society. On the one hand, listening to Adesoji in class i got initiated into an epistemology that sees the study of history as a heterotopia and approaching historical writings premised on 'context in context' pedagogy. On the other hand, one approach I adopted from Howard Zinn was his pedagogy on the radicalization of history. In a nutshell, these two historians are thresholds pushers in historical scholarship. I 'twaley' them.

To know Abimbola Adesoji's historiographical methodology and to feel the imports and trajectories of his disquisition on #ThePoliticsOfHistory; make sure you witness the epoch inaugural lecture of this sagacious professor of History. He's well and globally published. Among other things, he's a Georg Forster Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universitat, Frankfurt, Germany. He's one of the rarest teachers and practitioners of history I had come across in my short sojourn into historical scholarship. His fecundity, audacity and sagacity have continued to remain as eternity in my historicity and liminality. It's golden to listen to him speak.

#Venue: Oduduwa Hall, OAU Ife, Nigeria
#Date: July 9, 2019
#Time: 5pm prompt (OAU no dey use African time o)
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