Dr. Ọbádélé Kambon: Parallels between Akan Ananse Stories and Yorùbá Ìjàpá Tales: Structure, Function, Content and Worldview December 4, 2014: 9:00AM In Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s 1963 “African Genius” speech inaugurating the official opening of the Institute of African Studies (IAS), professors and lecturers were exhorted to pursue the study of Africa – beyond arbitrary territorial or regional boundaries – in new African-centred ways to reveal Africa’s underlying unity. How can Ananse and Ìjàpá stories be understood within an African framework of deep thought “in entire freedom from the propositions and pre-suppositions of the colonial epoch” or “neo-colonial” epoch, as it were, as required by Nkrumah? In this presentation, we reveal connections with regard to the worldview, structure, function and content of Akan and Yorùbá stories using dikenga, the cosmogram of the Bakôngo, as a tool for oral literary analysis revealing intertextual parallels through space and time. We highlight six (6) sets of stories common to both Akan and Yorùbá people differentiated simply by the main character being the spider or the tortoise. Further, we show how the stages of transformation of any story can be gainfully analysed using the proposed dikenga theory of literary analysis. We find that this approach can be generalized to shift our concepts of “storylines” and “timelines” to reveal the patterned and cyclical nature of material and immaterial phenomena for, according to Kôngo teaching, “nothing exists that does not follow the steps of the cyclical Kongo cosmogram” (Fu-Kiau 1994). Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are solely those of the presenter in a private academic capacity and do not necessarily represent the views of the Institute of African Studies.

• published: 12 Dec 2014
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