hello professor falola

um how in your career did you start

working with global history

and what finds it in your conception

uh thank you um

i studied in nigeria

from the 1950s

till 1980 when i got my phd

and began to us to also teach in nigeria

so the issue of um

when you come to understand

globalization

uh is i will say from the very start

of my life the first day

because i was a member of the british

empire

so colonial subjects were part of a

global forces of imperialism

so in other words i was born in georgia

and when we began to go to school

this lab by many of the contents

were eurocentric british oriented

there's a global uh

educational impact

so a nice school you have to read

shakespeare for instance

damn late nothing can be more global

than that

in terms of finding the clever way as

gramsci argued
to introduce

globality globalism imperialism to you

via institutions of the church and

education

now in school

at the university it was the age of what

you call developmentalism

in which african countries were looking

for solutions to development

and those solutions would drive you

fast to understand what they call

developed countries

you have to do their stress

second to understand development models

so that development models introduced

to us who are framed

in the global forces of modernization

global forces of capitalism

an attempt to discredit the global

forces

of socialism

and the overarching

project of developmentalism was

modernity

whether in brazil or india nigeria

anytime you are searching for modernity

you are already strong you are already

developing

global history you can do it consciously

as if you said

i want to know about written

or you can do it unconsciously through

asking students to read

shakespeare or you can do it as a

policy when you introduce to so-called

global forces of modernity and

development

so in those various ways one's

career was embedded in that project

and structured in that project and you

live by that project and its

consequences

so i call you a colonial subject uh

subject even call you primitive like

underdeveloped

all these are global history

in their dynamics in which you have been

inserted out of your will

out of your will without your permission

colonial subjects postcolonial subjects

subordinate subjects they are all

inserted

are embedded into the forces of

globalization

and what are the possibilities for

dialogue

between the local and the global the

micro and the macro

well this can take me one hour to

flesh out but i won't spend all your

time

so those possibilities have always been

there

although you frame it as if it's new

it's not

so when you talk about

movements and mobility in history

before before bc that's what you are

talking about

and these movements and mobility have

been with us for centuries

when you talk about

the development of world religions islam

and christianity

they were local but they became regional

and became global

so isla religion christianity was

created in a small place

islam was created in america

medina small places but they became

global and triggered a global

conversation

around religion by the 11th century

arabism and islam had spread in north

africa

going further down by the 13th century

mansa musa

of mali empire
the richest man of his time made a

costly and elaborate pilgrimage

to saudi arabia it was a conversation

by the 15th century the portuguese had

destroyed the flourishing city of kilwa

kiwa mogadishu

all part of the swahili culture

were connected in a global traffic that

reached gujarat

connected to the persian world

connected to cairo connected to the

chinese sikh trade

and you can see this elaborate dialogue

going

on at what you call the micro and the

macro

let me give examples

check the atlantic ocean and the

transatlantic slave trade

those were tremendous global forces

bringing ideas conversation

transatlantic world

the black atlantic the atlantic

economies the atlantic ideas

the spread of food from brazil to lagos

by the by the 18th 19th century there

were brazilian style houses

along the coast of west africa

so it's so intense or if you talk about

transcendent trade goods move from kano

to to morocco

to cairo cairo being the

center of a global network of trade

so their conversations has they have

always been there

and that dialogue has always been there

if you move if you mean for the most

recent of pan-africanism

you have the idea of neglitude

you have dependence in theory

originating in latin america

spreading to africa as a conversation on

developmentalism

and theories

you you have pentecostalism

all over the world now you have

pan-africanism

you have nothing mental your great

scholar

in conversation with poets of negritude

all over the world

you have pierre vajay

a distinguished brazilian scholar what

do they specialize on

i specialize in the uruguay i'm yoruba

where did i meet him he lived for

nigeria

the university where i attended what

were his books about about plants away

about medicine collected in in europe

among the europa brought to brazil

now the book has been translated into

portuguese i was in one condomly house

in the countryside of sao paulo i saw

his book there

as soon as i got to the house

it was exactly similar to the house of

my father built in the 1940s

with the garden of arms and plants with

the way the compounds were arranged

with the multiple women so so this

these conversations are so global

they've been with us for a long time

only that they're changing

they're changing thank you

and how to work with the multiple

temporalities

of global history is there a short term

global history okay i'll just

um look at it from outside

what is of interest to me

which is the issues around

epistemologies of the south

in confrontation with the epistemologies

of the not

but in interactions with one another

so those multiple temporalities

must confront this epistemologies

epistemic violence in what ways did

global ideas destroy the ideas from the

south

epistemic suicide in what ways

the people in nigeria and brazil give up

on their own ideas

to accept dominant

ideas

rebelling

redefining the imposition of

new ways of understanding the world

by which you either destroy

suppress undermine your own ways of

understanding the world

and that is key to my own interest

and and part of the rescue operation in

these temporalities

is the interrogation of times

questioning definitions of developing

development poverty those have to be

questioned

question in the terms the labels were

used

what is world district if

you misrepresent the maps what is world

history

if i can eat your food but you cannot

eat mine

what is all this tree if i'm wearing my

best clothes and you call it pyjamas

in which that wall this tree becomes not

wall district

but the demonic impositions

so i prefer methodology that

will slice this global history

into ideas editions

ontologies ways of knowing ways of

thinking

before we can even begin to construct

the historical narrative

because historical narratives are not

neutral

i can't just say i'm interested in them

spain and brazil

and brazil and lagos what are the

underpinning ideologies guiding my

interest

and then how do i do the unit of

analysis

am i doing the unit of analysis to

reinforce

yamunic ideas because i also have to

pay attention to units of analysis

and i have to pay attention to language

you have to pay attention to the

archives

before i can now begin to map out

areas that i want to slice because what

you call

global history can be another limb for

imperialism

if you are not very careful in other

words we are just replacing imperialism

of the 19th century

with globalism of this current century

and you are doing exactly the same thing

you're still saying brazil africa that

continents

these are subjects and things like that

and and those temporalities

must uh

be very sensitive to people and their

ways of knowing their ways of knowing

if i come to illya in bayer that's a way

of knowing

that you do not represent in these

temporalities

and the conception of global extracts

um does each type of research

object has the potential to become

global history

yes i know

so you have

on the yes side you know there is

you can't just make that distinction all

the time

because you have to consume

anytime you consume products

you're already part of that globalized

trade even though you may be local

if you take tobacco in 18th century

ghana good cause or a crowd among their

shanti

it can be tobacco from brazil

if you drink alcohol in lagos in 18th

century

it could be from portugal although you

call it luca

if you engage in leisure and you put a

lane in your house to the

pot to decorate your house it could have

been from china

our behaviors

behaviors that you think are local

cat can have global origins

so yes any any research you take

you can look at these global components

the embeddedness into the global

you you can frame it that way

because for a long time it has been

difficult

for any society

not to be part of that global forces

so you can study village in terms of its

global forces

the clothes they wear the utensils they

use

the food they consume even the language

they speak
but you can also say consciously

you want to study them as localism how

do they reject

those forces especially of ideas

of forceful

penetration of

hegemonic ideas

phospho penetration of world views that

change in world view

you can study them as such

but you can also consciously say you

want to do d

coloniality

remember a moment ago i spoke to

epistemology you can also say you want

to decolonize

the knowledge you have been received

and in decolonizing you want to begin to

assert

your own forces

you want to give integrity to the way

you think

you want to assert your own values

and you also have to study

comparative ways of living comparative

ways of survival

and see the extent to which you can use

ideas

to understand yourself to reform your

space

and to engage with

a variety of people in different parts

of the world

and in your opinion what are the main

risks

and the main challenges in global

history

first of all to undermine

your own

ontologies that's how you

narrate yourself second

to undermine the tools of your own

analysis

third to undermine your language

number four to undermine your own

culture

and if you accumulate all this to

undermine

your own epistemology because if you

undermine all of that

you become a victim of definition let me

give you

an example covered 19

covert 19. if you look at the narratives

the african system

of boosting immune system

food as medicine they began to call it

alternative medicine

so the bitter liver in candomble houses

it becomes alternative

medicine but vitamin c

is medicine but they're basically doing

the same thing

but you call one that is organic to you

alternative

to the one you received

that is one big risk because by doing

that you are not allowing what you call

an alternative to develop

second the frame things you have been

doing for centuries

as new for instance they told africa

that social distance in this new

quarantine is new no they were not new

they are just doing it differently what

you call vaccination

the european people call it incisions

they won't need it in condom play houses

instead of using the long needle to

inject medicine

they use a piece of blade to do small

cut

and put the medicine in the blood to get

your means to get your

blood stream

so incision becomes illegitimate

fascination becomes legitimate and

for centuries africans have been doing

quarantine

that's how they treated mental illnesses

that's how they treated depression

that's how they treated

leprosy that's how they treated living

infection

that's how they treated all sorts of

diseases

that they they contact diseases

they've been doing so for centuries

and now when you say to provencal with

19

lose social distance how do you do

social distance in sao paulo and lagos

in mexico city

cities of 20 million people how do you

social distance

i do social distance in lagos given the

way they build houses

20 people can be in the same house in

their own rooms

sharing bad truth and sharing picture

those are part of the risk in which you

take ideas that work in western

societies

and you now say go and use them in the

congo go and use them in lagos

that's not going to work

or even in ordinary things like food

cultures have food over the centuries

that blend with the bodies that did not

give them diabetes and have blood

pressure

then you introduce new ways of feeding

into them

and suddenly they

change their body structure when

africans come to the us

they were lean three years later they

became fat

why they changed their diets

europa culture likes to eat

bitter food food that is bitter

they don't put sugar in soup then you

come to the us they put sugar

in everything you eat they put sugar in

sauce

if you barbecue at the back of your

house

those vertical sauces are basically

sugar

your body for years you've been born

in ibadah was used to something bitter

you come to austin where i live you

begin to eat sugar

and then one day you wake up you look at

yourself in the mirror

from 140 pounds you've already become

200 pounds and you ask yourself

what is going on and then the initial is

to say

do this do that and everything the

nutritionist is telling you doesn't work

because you probably come from a culture

where they don't eat three meals

and your nutrition is to now say

breakfast is the best food in the

morning who told you that

who told you that maybe you have been

doing intermittent fasting eating twice

a day in which you're basically fasting

for 14 hours and your body

is adapted to it and then the

nutritionally said no

amanda breakfast is a breast

and then you had one more meal

so that's one of the risks in which

knowledges are basically local

many of what we call universal knowledge

this

the basically the extension of western

local ideas

christianity was a local religion islam

was a local religion and then they

globalized them

and as they spread some societies have

the wisdom

to localize them

some of the wisdom to translate them

some of the wisdom to decolonize them

and i want to close by saying the risk

of any form of global history

is to receive ideas

without domesticating them

without asking yourself how does this

idea work within my space

and for my own people thank you very

much amanda

thank you dr enjoy so much