ASA Presidential Lecture - STORIES and EMPATHY in a Time of Crisis: An African Viewpoint

Today, I am not going to be discussing any piece of literature, but will rather be sharing with you my Presidential Address that I delivered virtually to the African Studies Association conference that took place from November 18-21.
The African Studies Association was founded in 1957 and has grown to become the leading family for African studies scholarship anywhere in the world. I held the Presidency of the Association from November 2019, so this was my outgoing lecture as President.
In this lecture, I share a little bit of my childhood surrounded by oral storytelling and an eclectic array of books. I then proceed to share my enthusiasm for oral storytelling and show how it can be used as an analytical tool to look at phenomena well beyond the story worlds of my childhood. I draw lessons from them to discuss other aspects of scholarship I have pursued in my career, such as the forms of trotro lorry inscriptions in Accra and their relationship to the context of multilingualism. I also draw on oral storytelling to describe the principle of sentimental education and how we identify with the lives of others not only in the oral folktale, but in the novel, the cinema, the television soap opera and on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok, and various others.
I hope you enjoy the lecture.

[@ralphellectual6975]

There's a lot to absorb here. I followed most of it, though I had trouble focusing on folktakes and the relation between Akan and English. Your autobiographical reflection are interesting, makes me think about what influenced me positively and negatively--what you call a sentimental education. My mother has always read several books a week, not the same as I do, but she was always a reader, and I was a fanatical reader since early childhood. I'd even bring a bag of books with me to summer camp. I don't think I identify with as many things as you do, but I do remember some instances of writers who had an impact on me because their mentality though not life circumstances seemed just like mine ... This was the impact Richard Wright had on me as a teenager, for example. I never had the slightest interest in fairy tales or folktales or folk wisdom or religion. My childhood influences were literature--fiction, biography, science; television--The Twilight Zone, and I suppose some movies, though I don't remember which except for one I saw in high school--NOTHING BUT A MAN, which made me angry at racial oppression because I already hated people being treated like that. There are two constants in my reception of everything--my mind or emotions have to be stimulated, I hate just being entertained. You've got to feed my mind or emotions, or else you've got to leave me alone.

[@CriticReadingWriting]

Ralph, the important thing is to have been exposed to these imagined worlds from early on. That is what expands our imagination. I was lucky to also be exposed to folktales and fairytales, many of which I also regaled my children with. But in the end it is what you are now that really matters, not what you happen to have been as a child. So, just keep reading. . .

[@delphineabadiem.3481]

Really interesting and original analysis!

[@CriticReadingWriting]

Thanks, Delphine!