Knowledge, Power, and the Search for Epistemic Liberation in Africa

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this paper, I show that the strong relations of knowledge, power and liberation are worth reassessing and clarifying in light of the indigenous people of Africa’s quest for epistemic liberation. I argue that knowledge confers power to its producers that might be inappropriately deployed to impose an inferior status to those contentiously considered incapable of producing it. This has often been the character of relations of cultures where those considered as bereft of knowledge are put at the service of those who claim expertise and exclusive title to the production of the same. Yet, as much as it has been employed as an instrument to conquer and to subjugate, knowledge can also be an instrument of liberation. I argue that if ‘knowledge is power’, then the acceptance of the epistemic contribution of those who have been historically marked as without any knowledge is necessary if their agency is to be awakened and their liberation realised. This discursive move may be a necessary corrective for the indigenous people of Africa who are yet to emerge fully from the condition of physical and epistemic conquest.