Negotiating Performance: Osun in the Verbal and Visual Metaphors

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Ajibade, George Olusola:
Negotiating Performance: Osun in the Verbal and Visual Metaphors.
Bayreuth , 2005 . - (Bayreuth African Studies Working Papers ; 4 )

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Abstract

Ajibade Olusola’s thesis examines the dialectics of the localization and globalisation of the Osun cult, while appreciating its transformation into a deity of international repute. In understanding the transformation of Osun cult into a deity of national and international repute, the study investigates the roles of motifs and visual arts that were found to be crucial to the transformation process. In the analysis and interpretation of the data, the study identifies Osun as a personification of Yoruba women. This was evidenced in the materials collected, particularly the motifs and the visual arts, and equally discernible in the oral and other primary sources. Both the poetry and visual arts emerged as conceptual paradigms to project the power, prowess and image of Osun as a deity in the Yoruba pantheon of Orisa (deities). His analysis facilitates and enhances our understanding of the faith, fate, philosophy, perceptions and attitudes of the adherents of Osun cult in relation to its impact on the people locally and globally. It also reveals the intricate interplay between the verbal (word) and the visual (image) domains in Yoruba aesthetic practice. Negotiating Performance explicates the transformation of Osun cult in Osogbo from a local to an international phenomenon, principally through the slave trade of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and also through the appreciation of Osun visual art by an ever-growing international audience.