An Ethos of Transdisciplinarity: Conversations with Toyin Falola

Toyin Falola’s astounding intellectual production must be one of the mysteries in the intellectual world. It has transcended the confined world of historical research into broader horizons that include the role of the public intellectual. The present study would undertake a rigorous analysis of the origins, continuities and discontinuities of this transformation. This means we have to recast the debates regarding who is a public intellectual from a multiplicity of discursive situations and historical and cultural contexts. We have to employ methodological parallels from North Atlantic intellectual traditions. How did the role of the public intellectual emerge in the first place in world intellectual history? Addressing this question would enrich this research endeavour immensely.
In interrogating comparative discursive formations, we shall re-evaluate the roles, functions and achievements of continental intellectuals such as Betrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Andre Malraux, Albert Camus, Michel Foucault, Edward Said, Wole Soyinka and Pierre Bourdieu. Again, this discursive element will give this study a global appeal and range.

Sanya Osha has published prose, poetry and works of philosophy. He was a frequent contributor to Africa Review of Books/Revue Africaine des Livres. His other work has appeared in Gadfly Online, Transition, Los Angeles Review of Books, World Literature Today, Journal of World Philosophies, Evergreen Review, 3AM Magazine, Johannesburg Review of Books, The Elephant Online and Research in African Literatures. Professor Osha has worked at universities in Africa, Europe and the United States and is currently an adjunct professor at CLEA, University of Fort Hare, South Africa.