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Abstract
What has been the contribution of African intellectuals to postcolonial and decolonial scholarship? This question arises because there is emphasis on privileging works of Diasporic scholars from the Middle East and South Asia for postcolonialism and Diasporic scholars from South America for decoloniality/decolonisation. This article contributes to the complex politics of knowledge in Africa through centring often-ignored contributions of African intellectuals to the decolonisation of knowledge and politics. Conceptually and theoretically, what is introduced are issues of how epistemology framed ontology, how the cognitive empire invaded the mental universe of Africans, and how the quest for epistemic freedom informs resurgent and insurgent decolonisation of the twenty-first century. Thus, the article performs four key tasks: (1) it explains how epistemology frames ontology as its entry into the topical politics of knowledge; (2) it introduces and defines the concepts of the cognitive empire and epistemic freedom as they enable a deeper understanding of the complex politics of knowledge; (3) it historicises African struggles for decolonisation as reflected in African decolonial scholarship and the quests for epistemic freedom; and (4) it makes sense of resurgent and insurgent decolonisation of the twenty-first century as embodied by the Rhodes Must Fall movements in South Africa.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Bhambra, “Postcolonial and Decolonial Dialogues,” 115.
2 Allman, “#HerskovistsMust Fall?”
3 Robinson, Black Marxism.
4 Clapham, “Briefing: Decolonizing African Studies?”
5 Ibid., 138.
6 Ibid., 138–9.
7 Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Epistemic Freedom, see Chapter 1.
8 Clapham, ‘Briefing: Decolonizing African Studies?,” 151.
9 Collyer et al., Knowledge and Global Power, 9.
10 Ibid., 9.
11 Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Decolonizing the Mind, 88.
12 Terreblanche, Western Empires, 3.
13 Burbank and Cooper, Empires in World History, 3.
14 Nicolaidis, Sebe, and Maas, “Echoes of Empire,” 1.
15 Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Globalectics, 28.
16 Gildea, Empires of the Mind.
17 Nandy, Intimate Enemy.
18 Ibid., viii.
19 Santos, Epistemologies of the South; Santos, Decolonizing the University.
20 Santos, End of the Cognitive Empire.
21 Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Decolonizing the Mind, 3.
22 Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Something Torn and New, 21.
23 Ibid.; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Epistemic Freedom in Africa.
24 Quijano, “Coloniality of Power.”
25 Quijano, “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality.” 169.
26 Mignolo and Walsh, On Decoloniality, 191.
27 Ndlovu-Gatsheni, “Provincializing Europe.”
28 Ibid.
29 Biko, “I Write What I Like”; Biko, I Write What I Want.
30 Mudimbe, Idea of Africa; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Epistemic Freedom in Africa.
31 Ndlovu-Gatsheni, “Provincializing Europe.”
32 Santos, Epistemologies of the South.
33 Prah, Challenge of Decolonizing Education, 24.
34 Santos, Decolonizing the University, 154.
35 Odora Hoppers and Richards, Rethinking Thinking.
36 Wallerstein, Uncertainties of Knowledge, 58.
37 Hountondji, Endogenous Knowledge.
38 Ibid.; Hountondji, Struggle for Meaning.
39 Hountondji, “Knowledge Appropriation,” 26.
40 Connell, “Meeting at the Edge of Fear,” 21.
41 Maldonado-Torres, “On Coloniality of Being.”
42 Grosfoguel, “Epistemic Decolonial Turn,” 205.
43 Suárez-Krabbe, Race, Rights and Rebels, 3.
44 Ashby, African Universities and Western Tradition.
45 Ibid., 12–3; Blyden, Aims and Methods of a Liberal Education.
46 Blyden, Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race.
47 Tibebu, Edward Wilmot Blyden, 17.
48 Thiam, Return to the Kingdom of Childhood, 2.
49 Frankel, “Edward Blyden,” 278.
50 Ashby, African Universities and Western Tradition, 13.
51 Wandira, African University in Development, 40.
52 Adesanmi, You’re Not a Country, Africa, ix.
53 Ibid., 75.
54 Mazrui, Political Values, 27.
55 Nyamnjoh, “Decolonizing the University in Africa,” 1.
56 El-Malik and Kamola, Politics of Anticolonial Archive, 14.
57 Nyamnjoh, “Decolonizing the University in Africa,” 8.
58 Collin, Speaking of Universities, 17.
59 Ibid., 17.
60 Nyerere, Freedom and Unity, 219.
61 Diop, Precolonial Black Africa; Diop, Civilization or Barbarism.
62 Falola, Nationalism and African Intellectuals, 224.
63 Yesufu, “Emerging Issues of the 1970s,” 23.
64 Ibid., 15.
65 Yesufu, “Introduction,” 5.
66 Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism, xi.
67 Ibid., xi.
68 Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.
69 Amin, Unequal Development; Amin, Imperialism and Unequal Development; and Amin, Maldevelopment.
70 Ake, Social Science as Imperialism, 23.
71 Ibid., ii.
72 Mudimbe, Invention of Africa; Mudimbe, Idea of Africa.
73 Mamdani, Citizen and Subject.
74 Mamdani, “Africa: Democratic Theory and Democratic Struggles,” 2228.
75 Mamdani, “Between the Public Intellectual and the Scholar,” 78.
76 Ibid., 78–9.
77 Amin, Eurocentrism.
78 Zeleza and Olukoshi, Liberalization and Internationalization; Zeleza and Olukoshi, Knowledge and Society.
79 Zeleza and Olukoshi, Liberalization and Internationalization.
80 Arowosegbe, “African Scholars,” 324.
81 Mamdani, Scholars in the Market Place.
82 Gordon, Disciplinary Decadence, 9–10.
83 Ibid., 10.
84 Ibid., 10.
85 Ibid., 10.
86 Ibid., 10–1.
87 Olukoshi and Zeleza, “Introduction,” 3.
88 Santos, Decolonizing the University, 175–6.
89 Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Epistemic Freedom in Africa, 188–90.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni
Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni is Professor and Chair of Epistemologies of the Global South with Emphasis on Africa at the University of Bayreuth in Germany. He previously worked as Research Professor and Director of Scholarship in the Department of Leadership and Transformation (DLT) in the Principal and Vice-Chancellor’s Office at the University of South Africa (UNISA), South Africa. He was also the 2019 Visiting Professor at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS) at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). He is a leading decolonial theorist with over a hundred publications in the fields of African history, African politics, African development and decolonial theory. His latest major publications are Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonization (Routledge, July 2018); Rethinking and Unthinking Development: Perspectives on Inequality and Poverty in South Africa and Zimbabwe (Berghahn Books, March 2019) coedited with Busani Mpofu; and Decolonization, Development and Knowledge in Africa: Turning Over A New Leaf (Routledge, May 2020).