Báyò Akómoláfé – författare

A profound, playful, and kaleidoscopic collection from one of our most evocative contemporary philosopher-poets.A posthumanist polymath and "trans-public" intellectual, Báyò Akómoláfé has produced a vast body of work that represents a startling picture of the world in perpetual process and radical relation. Through an ever-growing archive of books, articles, interviews, films, social media posts, workshops, and rituals, Akómoláfé seeks to interrogate the fundamental assumptions and epistemological blind spots of our current culture in crisis.Selah: A Báyò Akómoláfé Reader presents a poetically arranged selection of Akómoláfés short-form writings, which draw inspiration from Édouard Glissant; Gilles Deleuze; Gregory Bateson; Octavia Butler; Fernand Deligny; Chinua Achebe; the adventures of Esu, the Yoruba monster-trickster and crossroads figure; and more.  A tightly curated composition of aphorisms, anti-epiphanies, prose poems, and philosophical fragments, Selah invites readers into the thicket of Akómoláfé’s thought, weaving together threads of his most critically creative concepts—such as ontofugitivity, ecocognitive assemblage theory, parapolitics, and postactivism. Taking its title from an enigmatic Hebrew word that appears throughout the Book of Psalms—one that suggests a moment of ecstatic exclamation or musical notation—Selah is a book that can be read in an hour or studied for years, kept by your bedside or passed among friends like an open secret. For those already swimming in the depths of Akómoláfé’s language, as well as those encountering his dynamic body of work for the first time, Selah offers an accessible and ecstatic entry into a visionary thinker’s signature thought and poetics.Selah is the second title from Aora Books, a publishing imprint dedicated to exploring transformational thought and culture that transcends borders, disciplines, and traditions. Rooted in an ethos of polyvocality and planetary consciousness, Aora publishes works that forge bold connections across time, place, ideas, and beings often seen as separate.

Tackling some of the world’s most profound questions through the intimate lens of fatherhood, Bayo Akomolafe embarks on a journey of discovery as he maps the contours of the spaces between himself and his three-year-old daughter, Alethea. In a narrative that manages to be both intricate and unguarded, he discovers that something as commonplace as becoming a father is a cosmic event of unprecedented proportions. Using this realization as a touchstone, he is led to consider the strangeness of his own soul, contemplate the myths and rituals of modernity, ask questions about food and justice, ponder what it means to be human, evaluate what we can do about climate change, and wonder what our collective yearnings for a better world tell us about ourselves. These Wilds Beyond Our Fences is a passionate attempt to make sense of our disconnection in a world where it is easy to feel untethered and lost. It is a father’s search for meaning, for a place of belonging, and for reassurance that the world will embrace and support our children once we are gone.