Dr. BÁYÒ AKÓMOLÁFÉ on Ontological Mutiny /338
Photo by Dodo Hawe of decomposing flower petals scattered across a deeply cracked and fragmented mudfield. An old, handmade clay jug sits in the center.
How are the crises of our times crises of being, crises of becoming? In this week’s conversation, Ayana is joined by returning guest Dr. Báyò Akómoláfé. Ayana and Báyò dance together through questions of crisis, identity, and rupture. As we attempt to break from the monoculture that cements us as citizen subjects of empire, Báyò suggests that we need an ontological mutiny.
Pointing out the possibilities of a more generous and spacious politics, Báyò calls listeners’ attention to the duplicity of safety. Perhaps the things from which we recoil contain promise. As we try to stabilize, cracks will emerge, and Báyò invites us to nurture each other through the ruptures. How might we descend to the crises of our times, and embrace the decay and compost that modernity has come to detest?
Considering the practices that may bring us to ask new questions and to come into new ways of being, Báyò highlights that which pulls at the threads of stability. As the empire of whiteness fades, we must experiment with a new nature-culture and with new forms of embodiment. While cracks and ruptures emerge, we may need something more than healing, we may need sanctuaries.
“Safety has had its endorsement withdrawn by the planet, and we’ve been invited to story new ideas, to story new tensions, to libate those vexed grounds and to ask new questions about what it means to be alive now.”
Photo of Dr. Báyò Akómoláfé by Rishika Nath
Báyò Akómoláfé (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Báyò Akómoláfé is the Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the postactivist course/festival/event, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains’. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Ancient Futures (Australia). In July 2022, Dr. Akómoláfé was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California’s (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute. He has also been appointed Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany, and Visiting Critic-in-Residence for the Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles (2023). He is the recipient of the New Thought Leadership Award 2021 and the Excellence in Ethnocultural Psychotherapy Award by the African Mental Health Summit 2022.
♫ The music in this episode is “PUMA” by Julio Kintu (Chloe Utley), “Bring Me Home” by Jahnavi Veronica, “Lavi Vye Neg” by Leyla McCalla, and “Blues De Enredo” by Los Hombres Calientes.
Episode References
Cripistemologies: Introduction
“Welcome to the The Wandering, Winding Way of the Wound” by Bayo Akomolafe
“Black Lives Matter, But to Whom” by Bayo Akomolafe
Frédérique Apffel-Marglin
Bolaji Badejo (Nigerian actor), Alien (1979)
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