A decolonial inquiry into the epistemic injustice against African epistemology

Abstract

Though much has been done in the area of epistemic injustice, not much has been done to address the logical problem of epistemic injustice against other epistemologies, especially the epistemologies of the South. Thus, the logical foundation of epistemic injustice remains under-explored in the literature of epistemic injustice. In this thesis, I seek to bridge the intellectual gap by exploring the logical foundation of epistemic injustice against African epistemology, using decoloniality as a theoretical framework. To do this, I first establish that epistemic injustice/marginalization of non-Western epistemologies is sustained by the two-valued logic of coloniality. With its principles of bivalence and determinism, this logic divides reality and people into two unequal sites: the sites of being and non-being, sites of knowledge and no-knowledge, superior and inferior, etc., this colonial arrangement, I argue, aims at presenting the epistemic accumulations of the West as authentic, superior, logical, acontextual, universal, and objective, while presenting other epistemologies as illogical, superstitious, inferior, and undesirable. I present decolonial epistemology as a veritable way of addressing this problem and problematize epistemic justice and epistemic liberation on the ground of logical inadequacy, in a sense that they are incompatible with African epistemic experiences and understanding of realities due to their adherence to the two-valued logic of coloniality which is exclusionary. I propose a revised version of epistemic liberation as a liberative epistemology, grounded on the Ezumezu logic, which is complementary and trivalent in nature. With this alternative logical variant, I argue that liberative epistemology, which entails the recognition of all epistemic sites and agents, and the allocation of equal epistemic rights to all epistemic agents irrespective of their race, gender, affiliation, and geographical location, possesses the needed capacity to ensure a balanced epistemic space for all epistemic agent to engage in a creative struggle with each other in a complementary manner without any form of discrimination. Exploring the practical variant of this proposal, I contend that liberative epistemology is adequate to address the problem of underdevelopment and techno-coloniality in Africa. While addressing possible objections from critics, I maintain that liberative epistemology does not amount to epistemic anarchism or the rejection of universality, but rather, it is an advocacy for epistemic inclusion and interrogation of the absolutization of the Western particular that has shunted other epistemologies to the margin.