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9 HOUSEHOLD OBJECTS AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF IGBO SOCIAL SPACE CHII(E ANIAI(0 R • Igbo attitudes to objects of material culture and the language used to describe them play an important role in Igbo apprehensions of reality. Indeed, Igbo words for objects are arguably as important as the objects themselves. Thus when Igbo say Afamefuna, "Let not my name perish," the name refers not simply to the individual speaking but to his household (obi/obu), its contents, and what it "stands" for as well. Here the name is a metaphor for the historicity of family life and the ideal of its material and spiritual prosperity. A name tells. The name given to an object defines and circumscribes the object's reality, such that even the mention of the object's name in its absence evokes its material and symbolic substance. This is especially evident in onomatopoeic words, such as agwolo agwo, whose sound patterns both recall and signify the act of coiling. Here, object and name are one, and it is irrelevant to argue whether an understanding of the object should proceed from name to object or from object to name, just as it would be impossible to distinguish an object's cultural meaning and its function. An interpretation of Igbo material culture must rely upon both. The unity of words and objects enters our understanding of Igbo material culture in yet another way. Igbo experience and apprehend the world through words and verbal expressions. Considered together, these expressions constitute a taxonomy of Igbo social thought and allow "the apprehension of a culture whose reference points are taken from within the culture itself" (Soyinka 1976:3). They offer a multilayered vision of the Igbo world as a composite image, one in which an Igbo views "his own earth being, his gravity-bound apprehension of self [as] inseparable from the entire cosmic phenomenon" (ibid.). In this essay, I examine three verbal expressions and show how they illuminate our understanding of Igbo material culture: (1) Ihe di abuo abuo, "things are in twos (or pairs)" (Aniakor 1973); (2) Ihe kwuru, ihe akwudebe ya, "wherever something stands, something else stands beside it"; Household Objects and Igbo Space 215 (3) okirikiri bu ije agwo, "cyclic movement is the serpent's walk" (Ifemesia 1979). These expressions have broad conceptual implications in Igbo cosmology . For example, ihe di abou abou, "things are in pairs," implies a binary complementarity in which the difference between two objects constitutes their similarity (rather than a binary opposition; cf. Fernandez [1977] on the Fang). Thus, when I asked an Igbo diviner in OgwaOwerri in 1972 to comment on the Igbo worldview, he repeated the ontological insight that "things are two (pairs)"-spirits aIld men (mmuo na mmadu); firmament and earth (elu n 'ala); men and women (nwoke na nwanyi); death and life; and so forth (see Aniakor 1973). This principle of dual organization has also been recognized in Igbo social organization (Jones 1949; Cole and Aniakor 1984). For example, the duality of firmament and earth (elu n 'ala) is a cosmic model for the grouping of Igbo settlements into the "upper and lower" or "the compound settlement nucleus" (uno) and "the outer farmland type" (agu). A closely related, but more dynamic concept is ihe kwuru, ihe akwudebe ya, "wherever something stands, something else stands beside it." An example is the pairing of spirits and people, who are distinct in their respective domains, the physical and the spiritual. People have material corporeality while spirits are other-worldly and without material substance . Yet their differences imply other similarities, for Igbo say "what pleases men pleases spirits." People define the nature of being based on apprehended principles of causation. If one says yes, the Igbo accept it as right and natural, the gods simply give their support. On the other hand, although a bad destiny (ajo chI) may permanently handicap one's progress in life, individual will can reverse this trend. In the Igbo world, the forces of destiny on the one hand and individual will and enterprise on the other constitute paired elements of causation. Such a worldview recognizes the simultaneity of two levels of phenomena. Things paired in unity or dynamic opposition may also be cyclical. Igbo say okirikiri bu lje agwo, "cyclic movement is the serpent's walk." This is often reframed in the context of masking as ada akwu otu ebe ekiri mmanwu, "you do not watch a mask performance from one visual viewpoint." Shifting viewpoints constitute the aesthetic...

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