This is a study of the Ugandan poet and cultural critic Okot p'Bitek. In his poems and critical essays, Okot engages with the oral traditions of his people—the songs, dances, funeral dirges, and so forth—seeing them as manifestations of the people's philosophy of life. Imbo's book aims to make explicit the philosophical questions raised in Okot's work, placing them within the wider picture of contemporary African philosophy as a whole.

Often understood as synonymous with “oral history” in Indigenous title and rights cases in Canada, “oral tradition” as theorized by Jan Vansina is complexly imbricated in the European genealogy of “scientific history” and the archival science of Diplomatics with roots in the development of property law and memory from the time of Justinian. Focusing on Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia, which resulted in the first declaration of Aboriginal title in Canada, this paper will discuss Tsilhqot’in law in (...) the context of the court’s deployment of Vansina’s theory and its genealogy, and conclude that “oral tradition” functions as a legal fiction enabling the court to remain in the familiar archive of its own historiography while claiming to listen to the Elders. (shrink)

Anuta is a small Polynesian community in the eastern Solomon Islands that has had minimal contact with outside cultural forces. Even at the end of the twentieth century, it remains one of the most traditional and isolated islands in the insular Pacific. In Oral Traditions of Anuta, Richard Feinberg offers a telling collection of Anutan historical narratives, including indigenous texts and English translations. This rich, thorough assemblage is the result of a collaborative project between Feinberg and a large cross-section (...) of the Anutan community that developed over a period of twenty-five years.The volume's emphasis is ethnographic, consisting of a number of texts as related by the island's most respected experts in matters of traditional history. Feinberg's annotations, which arm the reader with essential ethnographic and historical contexts, clarify important linguistic and cultural issues that arise from the stories. The texts themselves have important implications for the relationship of oral tradition to history and symbolic structures, and afford new evidence pertinent to Polynesian language sub-grouping. Further, they provide insight into a number of Anutan customs and preoccupations, while also suggesting certain widespread Polynesian practices dating back to the pre-contact and early contact periods. (shrink)

The awareness of the last 20 years about embodied cognition is directing multidisciplinary attention to the musical domain and impacting psychological research approaches from the 4E cognition. Based on previous research regarding musical teaching and learning conceptions of 30 young guitar apprentices of advanced level in three learning cultures: Western classical, jazz, and flamenco of oral tradition, two participants of flamenco with polarised profiles of learning were selected as instrumental cases for a prospective ex post facto design. Discourse (...) and practice of the two flamenco guitarists were analysed in-depth to describe bodily issues and verbal discourse on the learning practice in their natural contexts. Qualitative analysis is performed on the posture, gestures, verbal discourse, and musical practice of the participants through the System for the Analysis of Music Teaching and Learning Practices. The results are organised attending: the Embodied mind through differential postures and gestures of flamenco participants that showed a fusion among verbal, body language, and musical discourse with respect to the musical literacy cultures; the Embedded mind and a detailed description of circumstances and relationships of the two flamenco participants, and how music is embedded in their way of life, family and social context, and therefore transcends musical activity itself; the Enactive mind, regarding the active processes that make differences between the reproductive and the transformative flamenco apprentices, then tentative relationship are observed in the discourse of each apprentice and the way in which they practice; finally, the Extended mind through the bodily, technical and symbolic tools they use during learning. Flamenco culture of oral tradition made use of listening, and temporary external representations instead of notational, but also the body played a central role in a holistic rhythm processing through multimodality, such as singing, playing, and dancing. Conclusions point out the embodied mind as a result of the culture of learning reflected through the body and the gesture in instrumental learning. (shrink)

"Dr. Rubin has brought cognitive psychology into a wholly unprecedented dialogue with studies in oral tradition. The result is a truly new perspective on memory and the processes of oral tradition." --John Miles Foley, University of Missouri.

"Dr. Rubin has brought cognitive psychology into a wholly unprecedented dialogue with studies in oral tradition. The result is a truly new perspective on memory and the processes of oral tradition." --John Miles Foley, University of Missouri.

John Calvin claims that the foundation of Scripture is the oracles and visions revealed to the patriarchs, transmitted through countless generations by an oral tradition that faithfully preserved these oracles. The oral tradition of the patriarchs also contains practices not found in written Scripture that are applicable to the church of Calvin day.

Imaginary worlds recur across hunter-gatherer narrative, suggesting that they are an ancient part of human life: to understand their popularity, we must examine their origins. Hunter-gatherer fictional narratives use various devices to encode factual information. Thus, participation in these invented worlds, born of our evolved ability to engage in pretense, may provide adaptations with information inputs that scaffold their development.

George Sword an Oglala Lakota (1846–1914) learned to write in order to transcribe and preserve his people’s oral narratives. In her book Delphine Red Shirt, also Oglala Lakota and a native speaker, examines the compositional processes of George Sword and shows how his writings reflect recurring themes and story patterns of the Lakota oral tradition. Her book invites further studies in several areas including literature, translation studies and more. My review of her book suggests some ways it (...) could be used as a primary resource book in developing curricula in Indigenous philosophy . (shrink)

The 21st century has witnessed an urgent need to digitise, learn, manage, preserve and exchange oral history in South Africa. This forms the background of the demonisation of indigenous knowledge systems that has impacted negatively and eroded the African values, norms, purpose, growth, sustainability and improvement of indigenous communities. In light of this realisation, this article explores the challenges offered by digitisation of VhaVenda oral history. It is well known that the digitisation of oral tradition carries (...) both the good and the bad. Journalists, academics and archivists of oral history cannot become spectators and allow challenges to stop them from collecting, recording and managing valuable heritages. The article is premised upon the Sankofa and critical theory frameworks. An Afrocentric participatory and exploratory qualitative research design was employed to investigate the data. VhaVenda knowledge holders, journalists, academics, and archivists’ views were solicited using semistructured interviews. Participants were selected using purposive sampling. The article’s findings unveiled that the digitisation of VhaVenda oral tradition has been an acute daily agony because of the following thorny issues: language issues, methodological challenges, sponsorship and the politics of preferring. Because the country faces the danger of losing out on gaining the benefits of VhaVenda oral history, the authors encourage and promote a holistic approach embracing multiple stakeholders to overcome the challenges faced in digitising the VhaVenda oral tradition.Contribution: The study advocates for the balancing of ancient traditional forms and relating them to present technology so that oral history trajectories march into the future, grounded in Afrocentric expressions whilst maintaining flexibility to accommodate the versatile nature of culture by embracing technology. (shrink)

This study aims to examine the philosophical life values of the Manggarai people in Western Flores, which are reflected in the proverbs of the Manggarai language (Go'et). Go'et is an oral literature that contains the values that govern the life of the Manggarai people. This study uses a qualitative descriptive approach design involving semantics theory to interpret the meaning of Go'et. The data in this study were obtained by conducting in-depth interviews with one of the Manggarai community leaders with (...) the initials AW (52) and secondary data available on the Manggarai Nuca Lale website. The data obtained were then validated using the Indonesian-Mangarai dictionary to find samples that fit this study. Nine data are relevant to the scope of this study based on the results of data collection that have been done. From the data found, the researcher concluded that there are three central values in go'et which contain advice and instructions for living a life under the norms that apply to the Manggarai community, such as unity, Manners and Wisdom, and passion and hard work. These findings are consistent with the fact that the Manggarai people uphold the values of unity, cooperation, and harmony among community members. (shrink)

Several interesting and significant philosophical, political and other possibilities abound in Derrida’s linguistic materialism, but the objectives of my paper are to describe the general tenets of Derridean linguistic materialism, and to deploy it in the context of Khasi oral tradition in order to lay bare the sensory origin of the sign. I therefore argue, firstly, that Derrida’s oeuvre espouses a nuanced case of linguistic materialism of the sensible-physical trace, which in its materiality is constantly in the process (...) of standing for or representing another sign/signs through the basic process of mediation that he calls écriture—‘writing’ in a more originary sense. Meaning is inscribed in the materiality of the sensible world, is manifested in the material trace of signifiers and is not mediated through the transcendental signified or metaphysical idea. By implication, Derrida’s linguistic materialism is also a theory of the material and empirical origin of the sign. However, the material nature of the thing, which itself is a sign, is not fixed, but is multifaceted, split and polysemic, making meaning contingent and differential. I argue, secondly, that such an understanding of language and meaning must direct us to language in its most original and primordial forms as found in original oral cultures, where the materiality of the sign is most unhidden and discernible. I, thus, give an account of the sensory, original and material character of linguistic meaning with reference to the case of the oral culture of the Khasi community of India. Khasi words, metaphors and imageries can be demonstrated more plainly in their sensory derivations. Query. (shrink)

A Philosophy of Mitzvot by Rabbi Dr. Gersion Appel sets forth the Hinnukh's objectives and his approach to revealing the religious and ethical meaning of the mitzvot. In his wide-ranging study, the author presents a comprehensive view of Jewish philosophy as developed by the Hinnukh and the classical Jewish philosophers. The Hinnukh emerges in this study as a great educator and moral and religious guide, and his classic work as a treasure-trove of Jewish knowledge, religious inspiration, and brilliant insight in (...) the molding of human character. (shrink)

Transmission of traditional art forms in the modern world has been a major issue in the field of arts education. Different issues have been raised on how to preserve the traditional art forms for f...

Focusing, in part, on the influence of Jurassic-era seas on the philosophical beliefs of the Hopi and Zuni cultures of the American Southwest, the article investigates the fluid cognitive processes of the human mind and methodically investigates the presence of historical content in works from oracy-based peoples. Formal analyses of the embedded data encoded in historical oral narratives are provided and are based on Barber and Barber’s mytho-linguistic framework. The application of Roger C. Echo-Hawk’s methodology for the assessment of (...) narrative works that can contribute to cultural affiliation in consultations relating to the Native American Graves Protection Repatriation Act is considered as a possible model for similar change in the areas of assessing the relevance of material culture. The necessity of creating a similar critical framework for evaluations of the visual arts of ancient pre-historic era in the United States in keeping with the trend in narrative studies is discussed in support of the development of ‘period eye’ perspectives on which future objective studies may be based. The valid contexts an approximated period eye perspective can provide for more authentic replications of complex metaphorical relationships and cosmographies on the visual plane is demonstrated in the article’s final drawings. (shrink)

The Sai Baba movement, one of the most widespread and popular modern South Asian religious movements, owes its origin to a saint, Sai Baba of Shirdi (d.1918), who was probably born around 1838. Through his successor, Sathya Sai Baba (b. 1926), the movement has become a transnational phenomenon in the late twentieth century and has also expanded the main centers of its charisma, including today Shirdi town in the Indian state of Maharashtra and Puttaparthi town in the neighboring state of (...) Andhra Pradesh. While most of the available literature is hagiographical in nature, some aspects of the movement have been studied - the figures of Shirdi Sai Baba and Sathya Sai Baba, the middle-class constituency of the Sathya Sai Baba movement, role of miracles, and the pedagogical role of movement, for instance. These studies are part of a growing interest in new religious and reformist movements in South Asia in the past century, their impacts on civil society and its institutions, and their relationships to the nation-state. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est le fruit d'une recherche approfondie dans le champ de l'esthétique et de l'herméneutique des traditions orales africaines. Il est remarquable par sa singularité et son niveau d'élaboration philosophique. Il aura fallu traverser le triple brouillage des codes culturels eux-mêmes, de l'acculturation notamment coloniale, et du particularisme des études ethnologiques et philosophiques alors disponibles. Il aura fallu, en outre, mettre en oeuvre une démarche d'analyse régressive permettant de décliner les catégories qui, en deçà des normes et des procédés (...) constituant le système des réponses, les font tenir ensemble. L'oeuvre n'est pas une invite à un repli passéiste de la culture négro-africaine sur elle-même. Il faut y voir plutôt une tentative de détermination d'un "fonds de sens" susceptible de réappropriations différentes. (shrink)