Universities and the legacy of colonial epistemicide

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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

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Sep 9, 2021, 5:49:30 PM9/9/21
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Toyin Falola

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Sep 13, 2021, 2:41:15 PM9/13/21
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https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20210908100721929


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Toyin Falola

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Sep 13, 2021, 3:31:07 PM9/13/21
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Biko Agozino

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Sep 14, 2021, 8:17:02 AM9/14/21
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"The global spread of knowledge has been with us for some time,” he says. No society or knowledge system has been left untouched by modernity, and communities across the globe have all been grappling with its consequences for several centuries.

“Yet, colonial conquest brings epistemicide. It’s the killing and erasure of knowledge. If you conquer people, you want to impose your own knowledge on them. You put your archives on their archives.”

So Oga Falola, which of your ideas did the university in Africa kill with epistemicide? Is it not more a case of epistemic theft, at least  in the sense that knowledgeable brains are drained away from the societies that produced them even with religious beliefs that did not originate in the west? The universities in Africa should be commended instead of being killed with epistemicide. They deserve reparative justice from countries that benefit from the foreign technical aid produced by graduates from home.

Biko

On Monday, 13 September 2021, 14:41:15 GMT-4, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:


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Gloria Emeagwali

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Sep 14, 2021, 11:48:39 AM9/14/21
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It is epistemicide, epistemic theft, epistemic dislocation and relocation, and more, and these are all distinguishable from the “brain drain” phenomenon.

GE


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Biko Agozino

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Sep 14, 2021, 5:36:15 PM9/14/21
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GE is right that it have plenty different, but articulated, crises facing the people. Genocide does not imply a complete destruction of a people. We are survivors. Epistemicide does not imply the killing of every indigenous knowledge system. Erasure has been resisted.

The Asante critique of the decolonial metaphor as a weapon fashioned in the interest of Europe is relevant here. Surely, Africans cannot be expected to agree with Europeans that colonialism erased our epistemic ways of knowing. They stole a lot but we still have plenty of juice.

The adoption of epistemicide by Africans is cliched and suspicious. I prefer epistemic looting and theft as argued by James in Stolen Legacies. It is more empowering to discourse the on-going decolonizatiojn struggles than to deploy the decolonial as a metaphor.

Biko

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