Rejecting the Universality of Western Knowledge

In this brief essay, we will attempt to define the term “indigenous knowledge” and consider its significance and centrality to African Philosophy. In order to do this we will seek to clarify the individual concepts of knowledge as epistemology as well as the concept of indigeneity using mainly the analysis put forward by Dismas Masolo. We will also briefly consider question of African epistemology as put forward by Kaphagawani and Malherbe.

This essay proceeds from the understanding that the question of the existence of an African Philosophy has long been settled and that it follows that an African Epistemology must exist. Our concern in this essay is to draw out its connection and relation to the concept of “Indigenous knowledge”

Finally we will conclude with a reflection on the significance of indigenous knowledge to African Philosophy.

Epistemology

In a narrow sense epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief and in a broader sense is concerned with how knowledge is produced and disseminated with regards to particular areas of inquiry.

Kaphagawani and Malherbe formulate their description of epistemology as “the study of theories about the nature and scope of knowledge, the evaluation of the presuppositions and bases of knowledge and the scrutiny of knowledge claims.” (Kaphagawani, DN & Malherbe, JN, 2003, p. 196)

This definition is useful for our consideration as it allows us to ask fundamental questions about whose knowledge is validated and disseminated and on what bases and using which presuppositions are these knowledge claims made.

Throughout the discourse on the question of epistemology, the contestation on how knowledge is produced, whether knowledge is necessarily universal or whether it is relative or unique to certain groups has remained a contested and often intractable dilemma within the discipline of philosophy.

In some sense the differences have revolved around those who produce their knowledge from within the dominant paradigm of western science, which claims universality, and those who produce their knowledge from the marginalised peripheries and even outside of the dominant western paradigm and which claims particular relativity.

While Kaphagawani and Malherbe suggest that there should be a middle ground between these two positions where both some universality and local variations on knowledge are used to generate knowledge, we would suggest that the production of knowledge must involve a much more defined relationship between the universal and the particular. More accommodation must be allowed for considerations of power within different relationships and especially in the process of producing knowledge. Without such consideration the validity and integrity of knowledge production will remain in question.

The universalising project of Western epistemology is far from a benign contestation of ideas and has historically and contemporaneously resulted in what Teboho Lebakeng describes as “[t]he ensuing violent destruction, in the physical sense and in the form of epistemicide, [which] facilitated the imposition of colonial moral values, traditions, philosophical outlooks, aesthetical preferences and economic fundamentals” (T.Lebakeng, 2014).

In this regard it might be useful to incorporate into the process of locating knowledge production along the lines of Feminist Standpoint Theory. T. Bowell articulates this theory of knowledge production as one in which: “(1) Knowledge is socially situated. (2) Marginalized groups are socially situated in ways that make it more possible for them to be aware of things and ask questions than it is for the non-marginalized. (3) Research, particularly that focused on power relations, should begin with the lives of the marginalized. “ (Bowell, 2016)

So to the question of an African Epistemology which is located within a different world view paradigm to that of the dominant Western tradition, and which is deeply impacted by the dominance and disruption of Western Colonial universalising knowledge production, the challenge remains how to socially locate our knowledge production such that it enriches the universal epistemological project, drawing, as it necessarily must, from its own world view and experience.

Indigenous Knowledge

It is thus in the context of a struggle against epistemicide, that the development and reclaiming of indigenous knowledge and indigenous knowledge systems is not only an urgent imperative, but will require what Lebakeng, Manthiba and Phalane call “the need to “cut the intellectual umbilical cord from the western epistemological paradigm and move away from borrowed discourses.” (J.T. Lebakeng; M.Manthiba Phalane; N Dalindjebo, 2011)

It is only when different knowledge systems can meet as equals that it will be possible to, as Odora Hoppers suggest; to bring the different knowledge systems into dialogue with each other in the process of producing a holistic knowledge framework that could have universal resonance. (O.Hoppers, 2002, pp. 2-22)

Assuming such a meeting of equals, Mungwine in describing Dismas Masolo`s paper entitled; Philosophy and indigenous knowledge; an African Perspective, records Masolo as arguing that philosophers on both sides of the cultural divide are now agreed that all human knowledge is human centred and therefore indigenous in various respects. (P.Mungwini, 2015, p. 59)

Mungwini (2015) further describes Masolo as arguing that “the term ‘indigenous’ is an ‘ecodeterminant ‘used to define the origin of items or persons in relation to how their belonging to a place is to be temporally characterised” and that “indigeneity” is a recent phenomenon arising from the need to “outline the mobility of ideas, schools and movements of thought in their contribution to the formation of African Philosophy as a separate intellectual movement.

According to Mungwini(2015), Masolo argues that the desire to distinguish between the native and the alien, the indigenous from the foreign  is always political and that  the “debate over the role of indigeneity in African philosophy is part of the larger postcolonial discourse about domination and emancipation.

It would be useful here to quote Masolo directly from his 2003 paper as found in Mungwini(2015). Masolo writes; “

[i]n opposition to that which is alien, foreign or extraneous, the postulation of the adjective indigenous before the name of any knowledge is to claim for the adjective the desirability of autochthony, self-representation, and self-preservation.”      

According to Mungwini (2015), Masolo also makes the argument that because Africans have encountered Colonialism and because they are no longer “monorational” in drawing only from one cultural experience to articulate their worldview,  they have instead become “polyrational” because they are now able to intergrate both African and Western methods of rationality. This Masolo argues, means that in a sense, Colonialism has left the African richer for being able to use both African and Western rationalities.

Finally in rejecting the claims of ethnophilosophy that an idea cannot be indigenous and philosophic at the same time, Masolo(2003) as reported by Mungwini(2015) draws on Houtondji to point out that “mastery (active, engaged, critical understanding of the local – the capacity to harness, manage and transform available resources of the condition and quality of life of a community or nation – should be the starting and focal point of development.”             

It is in this way, Masolo argues, that indigenous knowledge is intricately linked to African Philosophy. It is in the everyday and familiar usage of words, which is part of the indigenous, to describe the interaction between the indigenous and the external world.

Conclusion.

Throughout the essay we have considered the development of epistemology from its universalising tradition and connection  and complicity with Western Colonial conquest of non-western epistemologies, to the self- criticism that emerged from within the Western scientific and philosophical traditions and which in turn led to a plurality of contributions, especially those epistemologies such as Feminist Standpoint Theory and African Philosophy, which not only challenge the dominant paradigms but proceeded to produce knowledge in its own right.  

From this we are able to draw the conclusion that all knowledge has to be located at the particular local level, that all knowledge is human centred and as such indigenous in various ways. It is only when one has mastered an active engaged critical understanding of the indigenous can one proceed to produce knowledge about the universal.

This reaffirms the view of philosophers such as, Masolo that philosophy is always about the familiar and the indigenous, whatever it`s from or epistemic status.

Alongside this understanding one should add to the mix the manner in which the universalising tendency of Western knowledge and science grew alongside the military and ideological domination of non-western epistemologies which links western knowledge and science inextricably to the politics of domination.

From this we can clearly state that the struggle to reaffirm and to resuscitate even, the indigenous epistemologies of Africa, is both an urgent and necessary task that seeks to reverse the epistemicide which was intrinsic to the politics of domination associated with Western knowledge and science.

In many ways then, the assertion of indigenous epistemological validity, is more than a philosophical endeavour and reaches deep into the very metaphysical essence of the African being and its right to exist.