A Scholar's Creation of a Dialogical Digital Kingdom:​ The Paradoxical Achievement of Social Media Educator​, Writer​, ​​Artist and Academic Moyo​sore​ Okediji

 

 ​           Social Media  Educator​, ​Writer​, Professor of Art and Art History

 ​​                                    Thinker, Scholar, Contemplative Artist​

​                                                 Moyo​sore​ Okediji

Moyo​sore Okediji, also  known as Moyo​ Okediji is a Nigerian-American academic among whose most significant professional achievements, if not the most ​important  to date, is his work on the social media platform Facebook.

 

These accomplishments are   even more striking because such activity might gain him no professional rewards under the current reward system in US academia, where he is based, a Western model that is the template for the globally dominant educational and research system.

 

Okediji was already a highly achieved artist and scholar before his Facebook initiatives.​ ​He is one of the founders of the Ona art movement from Nigeria and a writer of strategic essays and books in African art history, scholarly achievements that have earned him a professorship in ​Art and Art History in the University of Texas at Austin.

 

Okediji is the founder ​and one of the administrators ​of the Facebook groups University of African Art, of  University​ of Ifa​, and of​ ​University of African Art (Département Francophone)​,  a ​version of the University of African Art ​more closely aligned to Francophone African art, ​and a powerful autobiographical writer on his Facebook wall, his imaginatively rich and fluid renditions of his life history also delivering potent insights into Yoruba culture and thought, his primary cultural foundations.

 

University of African Art has been a premier institution for the study of African art, particularly when Okediji ran regular interviews with figures in African arts, interviews held collaboratively with all members of the group who wished to participate, with Okediji as moderator, a demanding but extremely rewarding regimen which I'm not sure if Okediji has been able to sustain. 

 

The records of those discussions, called Face to Facebook Talks, remain accessible for reading on the group, however, even by those outside the group.

 

Beyond this targeted initiative, the group also has in it's records and ongoing, rich, spontaneously emerging discussions on ​various ​subjects in African art.

 

University ​of Ifa ​is a space for the presentation and discussion of phenomena associated with the Yoruba Ifa knowledge system, an interdisciplinary network Okediji also explores in his art and writing.​ ​The group might not be as cerebral as University of African Art, but is rich in content and vibrant in activity.

 

 

As a person with a long and ongoing  involvement in artistic ecosystems and study in Nigeria and the US, Okediji regularly explores issues in this field through his essays and artwork published on his Facebook wall and in University of African Arts.

 

His large Facebook network, related to  the various communities his offline and online activities  intersect, ensures that his posts receive a high degree of attention and of informed and articulate commentary.

 

Central to the dynamism of his Facebook wall is the autobiographical series he has been publishing there, at times correlating narrative vividness with explorations of the penetralia of Yoruba culture and thought emerging from specific episodes in his life's journey, such as the tenderly moving encounters between himself as a youth and his grandparents, autobiographical accounts often visually framed by a picture of the author with his luxuriant white beard and witty eyes​ beside an engaging work of art by himself​, a complementary analogue​, in the present, ​to the voyage through distant years of childhood and youth he is narrating.

 

What are the possible futures for these creative expressions?

 

Documentation beyond Facebook is vital.

 

Social media has established itself as volatile. This is demonstrated by changes in Facebook policies, such as the radical downgrading of Facebook Notes and discontinuation of new writing using this more formal and more enabling publication platform than the Facebook wall. Th​e unsteadiness ​ogf social media archives ​is evident in even more radical policy changes in other social media platforms, such as Yahoo's discontinuation of Yahoo groups and the ensuing unavailability of the archives of those groups emerging from decades of deeply involved engagement across various spheres of activity those  groups​ represent​. These problematic transformations are represented in the negative changes in the fortunes of  some social media platforms across time, as in the experience of MySpace​, which the rise of Facebook significantly  diluted of active users​. These volatilities are further suggested by possibilities arising from Elon Musk’s ongoing takeover of Twitter.

 

These developments reinforce the indispensability of print media. Online activity expands the democratization of opportunities for expression and publication initiated by print media but does not replace it.

 

Print, in this context, however, ideally goes beyond the monological culture it often represents, in which knowledge is constructed primarily through the efforts of one person, or a small group, even though integrating the contributions of others, to a focus on the development of knowledge as a collaborative enterprise.

 

Print media​,​ ​when ​re-publishing a social media publication rich in informed and articulate commentary​,​ is enha​n​ced by also publishing the commentary. Such commentary is complementary to the social media text that inspires it, highlighting the various angles from which it may be perceived, expanding it's knowledge potential.

These developments reinforce the indispensability of print media. Online activity expands the democratization of opportunities for expression and publication initiated by print media but does not replace it.

 

Print, in this context, however, ideally goes beyond the monological culture it often represents, in which knowledge is constructed primarily through the efforts of one person, or a small group, even though integrating the contributions of others, to a focus on the development of knowledge as a collaborative enterprise.

 

Print media, when re-publishing a social media publication rich in informed and articulate commentary, is enhanced by also publishing the commentary. Such commentary is complementary to the social media text that inspires it, highlighting the various angles from which it may be perceived, expanding it's knowledge potential.

Th​e dialogical matrix of social media makes it  more Platonic than Aristotelian, more dialogical than expository, referencing two primary models in the globally dominant methods of developing and expressing knowledge. Social media is even more dynamic than Plato's ​iconic ​Dialogues in demonstrating how knowledge may grow from the art of conversation.

​Such impactful social media creativity as that ​of the academic who has made social media a primary space for his pedagogical hungers and expressive imperatives  needs to be also secured in a medium that protects it from the vagaries of social media, ensuring the work's continuing reverberation across generations.

The world's cognitive network, the system generated through relationships between learning possibilities across the globe, is changing. In this context, Okediji's initiatives, particularly his University of African Art and his publications on his Facebook wall and the dialogues they inspire, are part of the centres of actualisation within this  emerging cognitive universe.