Òrìsà Devotion as World Religion: The Globalization of Yorùbá Religious Culture (review)

Òrìsà Devotion as World Religion assembles key contributions to a conference at Florida International University into a remarkably useful anthology, bringing together leading scholars, theorists, devotees, and practitioners on many aspects of Yoruba culture both in Africa and with its reverberating resonance in the African diaspora. Indeed the volume is arguably one of the most authoritative texts on Yoruba religion and cultural practices within the emerging field of African diaspora studies; Olupona and Rey have assembled a richly textured compendium of the most analytical discourses on Yoruba religious and cultural experiences to date. Their introduction is a remarkable tour de force, simultaneously celebrating Yoruba religion on the world stage and the extraordinary careers of Wande Abimbola and John Pemberton, two pioneering scholars in the field of Yoruba religion and Orisa worship.

The book is divided into two parts. The first, "Yoruba Religious Cultures in Africa," includes essays by Rowland Abiodun, Olasope Oyelaran, Olufemi Taiwo, Cornelius Adepegba, Flora Kaplan, Sandra Barnes, Diedre Badejo, H. O. Danmole, and Barry Hallen—all of them distinguished in their subdisciplines of Yoruba studies. The second part, "Yoruba Religious Culture Beyond Africa," responds as powerfully as the sixteen sacred palm-nuts of Ifa (called "ikin") in the Ifa divination system: it features sixteen equally stimulating essays by Olabiyi Yai, Afe Adogame, Laennec Hurbon, Ikulomi Djisovi Eason, Kamari Clarke, Marta Vega, Tracey Hucks, Mercedes Sandoval, Juan Sosa, Jose Pessoa de Barros, Jorge de Carvalho, Reginaldo Prandi, George Brandon, Joseph Murphy, Rita Segato, and Lorand Matory—a fitting complement to a religious tradition that has taken root well beyond Yorubaland and now thrives in the African diaspora. The keynote address of Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, entitled "The Tolerant Gods," serves as a preface, while John Pemberton's remarks provide a worthy postscript to the volume.

Despite its many engaging and fascinating highpoints, the book is certainly not without a few shortcomings. In "Twice Told Tales," Flora Kaplan creates a somewhat problematic analysis beclouded by some disturbing remarks on the subjects of her analysis, the Edo-Bini and the Yoruba. She asserts that "twice-told tales that reinvented Benin's hegemony were complicit and inevitably complicated by colonial experience . . . and deliberate obfuscation characteristic of Benin culture—as well as the wiliness of the Yoruba" (156–57). But surely the Edo-Yoruba relation is more complicated than a cursory and selective focus on an aspect of the nineteenth-century engagement can do justice to: Kaplan's essay ignores four hundred years of social, political, and cultural histories of the Edo-Bini and several of the different Yoruba subethnic groups—including Ife, Ijesa, Ijebu, Akure, Owo, and Ekiti—as well as those of their counterparts on the Island of Lagos, with whom the Edo have come in contact in the course of their history. The essay would have benefited from the rich reservoir of linguistic, artistic, and historical sources now available to researchers in the field.

In another essay, "Is There Gender in Yoruba Culture?" (the last chapter in the book), Lorand Matory challenges existing literary discourses on gender scholarship. Despite a spirited attempt to integrate the divergent opinions and perspectives of other scholars in the debate, such contrary and divergent opinions are not adequately represented; the volume would have greatly benefited from listening to the other side of this very interesting debate.

In spite of such shortcomings, Òrìsà Devotion is highly recommended to scholars, theorists, devotees, practitioners, and students interested in the transformations of Yoruba religion in Africa, with its manifestations and permutations not only in the African diaspora but also on the world stage.