Hello!
Immaculata here and I bring you the essay cover episode for the interviews I shared last week. Things have been hectic this past couple of weeks but I love that this inadvertently allowed me to stretch out Chapter 4 across two weeks.
I’ve used this podcast’s essay episodes to talk about my rationale behind the project, as a cover letter for the interviews that go out over the weekend. So far, I’ve asked and discussed, ‘Why Social Healing?’ and ‘Why the Humanities when people are starving?’
I made a case for the value of history, the humanities and social sciences, for the value of an interdisciplinary education, an education that values collective reflection, and intellectual freedom.
Then, I looked at what I call the Nigerian Nervous Conditions and other similar ‘diagnoses’ Nigerian researchers are making by other names. I painted a picture of the dominant culture of violence in Nigerian society and offered some explanations for why it came to be this way.
With last week’s episode, ‘Nigeria, the family’, we’ve now entered the second half of this project. This half contains an exploration of the ideas that went into the making of Nigeria as a nation, why healing boils down to taking ownership of one’s gifts, perspective, and journey and what the body (literal, communal, and figurative) is good for in this journey.
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Nigeria, the family (listen above)
This episode is all about individual responsibility without sacrificing one’s needs and self-esteem. It is a bit unlike the other episodes and is best summarised by the following quote from an essay by adrienne maree brown in YES! Magazine:
“The way I think of it now is in the framework of the imagination battle: there is a war going on for the future—it is cultural, ideological, economic, and spiritual. And, as in any war, there is a front line, a place where the action is urgent, where the battle will be won or lost. The world, the values of the world, are shaped by the choices each of us makes. Which means my thinking, my actions, my relationships, and my life create a front line for the possibilities of the entire species. Each one of us is an individual practice ground for what the whole can or cannot do, will or will not do.”
Each one of us is an individual practice ground for the whole. The power, the responsibility, the freedom there. All of this, the community we make, the relationships we foster with our environment, the technologies we build… it all comes down to you and I, the thoughts we have, the values we prioritise, the actions we take. This Nigeria is you and I.
Timestamps
03:48 Dezny’s ad
06:29 The Role of Individual Responsibility in Social Healing
12:06 Cynicism and Hope in Nigeria
16:22 Individual Practice Ground For the Whole
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