This chapter is centered on the scientific conceptualization of the term “photography” and its relationship with the photographer, the photographed, and the viewer, including that which is existent between the photographer and the camera, especially the chemistry between both lenses — biological and technological — the synergy and the differences. Photographs, according to the chapter, are representations of the reality of a particular timeframe. By answering certain expedient questions, the author engages his collections (with pictorial evidence) to illustrate the nature of photography vis-à-vis other factors that contribute to the shot, such as the camera and how it is received by the people. Moreover, the chapter views photography as a “social contract” between the photographer and the photographed, and “construction” as the process of taking the shot and reproducing the image. As for the interpretation of the picture by the viewer, it is believed that the pictures themselves dictate how they are to be interpreted or engaged, although this is also highly dependent on the viewer’s understanding. In addition, the chapter explores the effect of photography at its dawn and what its exclusion of African peculiarity, color-wise, meant.

This chapter is basically a review of a collection of poems mirroring the Yoruba cultural ethos, drawn from Etches on Fresh Waters, Scoundrels of Deferral, A Mouth Sweeter than Salt, and Counting the Tiger’s Teeth. Believing the core of a nation to be its people, the poetry collections seek to present a narration of the nation through poems about the cultural practices, values, and beliefs of the people. Clearly, the chapter depicts poetry as a creative mode of expression, performing a “dialectic function of narrating a group’s culture,” and as a means of “documenting” and “teaching” culture. The chapter launches into the cultural significance of poetry and how poetry reflects the past and present cultural realities of the Yoruba people especially. The cultural ethos include salutations to the revered, celebration of ethnic identity, sermons on moderation, unrestrained freedom, and hospitality, amongst others, while some were used to show women’s sociocultural position.

This chapter attempts to “study some of the many intersections between narratives and politics.” The human life or experience is seen as a story, a compilation of narratives that explain our realities. Similarly, politics, the apogee of any society, designed to establish and maintain it, is a “human narrative,” independent, and can be comprehended in relation to other aspects of the society. To expound on the theme of “collective action,” the chapter answers three questions: how people come together for a common goal; why enforcers of collective actions turn to stories; and the significance of storytelling in triggering a collective action. The chapter finds answers in “affinity” (feeling of oneness, proximity, and brotherhood) and “solidarity” (feeling of a common goal). The chapter broaches the issue of the inhibition to narrative politics — the “perceived reliance on imperial system of knowledge,” as well as its emancipation — “the elevation of repressed narratives.” In addition, through the author’s personal experiences, encounters, and references to scholarship, he mirrors some African narratives, especially the Yoruba and their importance in spurring positive change.

This chapter is a conclusion, a revisit from the beginning to recapture all that has been written. Analogously and methodically, the West had encountered Africa, witnessed its cultural practices but made the wrong, albeit demeaning, interpretation of it. Then came the “native,” attempting to walk them to the light through vast decades of experience and armed with an arsenal of cultural materials as evidence. The result is the challenge of the colonial matrix of power and resituating African literature at the center of African epistemology via autoethnography. Reemphasizing the points earlier made, the chapter discusses the position of self as an ambassador of the society it (self) comes from, having allowed its cultural ethos to manifest through self. Thus, everything about the individual manifests and reflects the “internal dynamics sustaining society.” This is further backed by the fact that the society shapes an individual through its “mores” and “institutions,” and thus makes it expedient to read a society through the character of an individual (an emissary), as opposed to an alien who cannot know beyond what is visible to the eyes.

The chapter begins with the concept of satire for the reader’s understanding of its broad and deep meaning and its significance. It proceeds to show the methodology of satire, which is to “highlight” and “ridicule” an act of folly to effect change in an individual, group, or society behind the act. It does this using figurative tools such as humor, hyperbole, irony, or sarcasm. In context, the chapter examines the use of satire and satirical expressions in works to mirror the African society. Importantly, the chapter notes that for satire to be birthed, there must be a set societal standard by which the subject’s action is measured against that which has been breached. While “morality is often the end goal of tales, parables, proverbs, etc., for satire, the concern goes above morality to include public interest.” The chapter finds satire in “songs of abuses,” which is very prominent among the Yoruba. These songs are often sung or performed when people are deemed to have fallen short of societal set standards. Or when criminals such as murderers, thieves, witches, and other extreme violators of social conduct are caught and especially exposed.

This chapter highlights how colonial institutions, especially Western education through academic knowledge, have helped to sustain the “colonial matrix of power.” Its corrupted nature is reflected in the extrapolation of data from Africa (subaltern culture) and rebranding them as Western, which is to the detriment and exclusion of Africans and a support structure for Western hegemony. The solution to this imbroglio as proffered by the author is “decoloniality,” a process that combats the root of the problem seeking to “dismantle the colonial matrix of power,” and enhancing the practice of “subaltern epistemology,” which is the means to achieve what he referred to as “epistemic liberation.” The systematic process to achieving this is what the chapter sets out to do here: show how the academic sustains the colonial matrix of power, examine the biases associated with ethnography, “deconstructs the researcher’s role in it,” bridge the gap between quality research and subaltern epistemology, and lastly, how to achieve epistemic liberation using autoethnography. Using autoethnography as the methodology, the researcher explains and justifies why the researcher, for a proper interpretation of African cultural ethos, has to be the researched.

This chapter explores cultural themes in Africa with “narrative politics” and its cultural values central to the discourse. In expounding “narrative,” the chapter brings to the fore its two most potent modes (literature and history), which reflect reality but are different in their modus operandi – through imagination (creativity) and verifiable facts. Written beautifully and with references, this chapter blurs the contrast between the two “narrative devices” and focuses instead on espousing their working togetherness. This is because a co-adoption of both in the narrative adds creativity to facts presentation, which thus makes it interesting to read and sustain readers’ interest just as their Yoruba derivative, Alo and Itan, is often a mixture of both.

The chapter also asserts the importance of autoethnography and how through personal experience and identity, the society’s “collective consciousness” is exhibited and manifested. Also, there are references made to the cultural relevance and implication of “time and season,” “taboos and superstitions,” “greetings and reverence,” as well as “namings and places” in Yorubaland.