Keynotes

In this address, I liken ICTs or digital technologies to what we in West and Central Africa have the habit of referring to as juju. I invite you as scholars of the digital humanities to see in the African belief in the compositeness of being human, as well as in the capacity to be present everywhere at the same time an indication that we have much to learn from the past on how best to understand and harness current purportedly innovative advances in information and communication technologies. The future is firmly in the past, even as we continue to claim and provide for creative innovation. The African tradition of self-extension through creative imagination that privilege cosmologies and ontologies of interconnections in myriad ways, holds great promise for theorising the intersections between humans and ICTs.

Juju as used in this address is a technology of self-activation and self-extension – something that enables us to rise beyond our ordinariness of being, by giving us potency to achieve things that we otherwise would fall short of achieving, were we to rely only on our natural capacities or strengths. It is true that our bodies, if well cultivated, could become phenomenal juju, enabling us to achieve extraordinary feats. But even such technically trained, programmed or disciplined bodies are likely to encounter challenges that require added potency. In other words, while our bodies have the potential to be our first juju, they eventually require additional juju for us to be efficacious in our actions. My address draws on the writings of Amos Tutuola and the universes he depicts to make this argument.