City of Gods Ilé-Ifè in Time, Space and the Imagination

Many African and religious studies scholars who, like myself, have grown up in indigenous traditions and have been educated in the West are undertaking a journey to define the realities of African culture.¹ This is in reaction to a number of works that do not take seriously or interpret adequately the depth of the African experience. In our reading of these works, we have encountered serious problems, including mistranslation and distortions of meaning. To avoid such problems, scholars must agree to go beyond phenomenology by privileging what I refer to as “indigenous hermeneutics”: that is, exploring paradigms and modes of…