Why Epistemic Decolonization?

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Published: Dec 10, 2019
Keywords:
conceptual decolonization, epistemic decolonization, epistemic liberation, epistemicide, Glissant, parochial universalism, translation, world philosophies

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Pascah Mungwini
Aaron Creller
Michael J. Monahan
Esme G. Murdock

Abstract

Why decolonize knowledge and philosophy? Pascah Mungwini proposes that epistemic decolonization should be implemented to remain true to the spirit of philosophy and to the idea of humanity. Aaron Creller, Michael Monahan, and Esme Murdock focus on different aspects of Mungwini’s proposal in their individual responses. Creller suggests some “best practices” so that comparative epistemology can take into account the parochial embeddedness of universal reason. While Monahan underscores that world philosophy as a project must openly acknowledge its own incompleteness and its instantiation in different world philosophies, Esme Murdock uses Glissant’s thoughts to make a case for the right to opacity as a strategy for subverting the dominating power of Euroamerican reason. In his reply, Mungwini underscores that philosophy will be able to increase the amount of justice, beauty, and truth in this world only when its practitioners begin to exhibit genuine pluralism in their work.

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How to Cite
Mungwini, P., Creller, A., Monahan, M. J., & Murdock, E. G. (2019). Why Epistemic Decolonization?. Journal of World Philosophies, 4(2), 70–105. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp/article/view/3116
Issue
Vol. 4 No. 2 (2019)
Section
Symposium

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Author Biographies

Pascah Mungwini

Pascah Mungwini is Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy, Practical & Systematic Theology at the University of South Africa. He has published widely on issues in African philosophy. Some of his recent publications include the book Indigenous Shona Philosophy: Reconstructive Insights, and articles such as “The Question of Recentring Africa: Thoughts and Issues From the Global South” in the South African Journal of Philosophy and “African Know Thyself: Epistemic Injustice and the Quest for Liberative Knowledge” in the International Journal of African Renaissance Studies.

Aaron Creller

Aaron B. Creller is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of North Florida. His research areas are cross-cultural approaches to epistemology and philosophy of science. His recent monograph is the 2018 Making Space for Knowing: A Capacious Approach to Comparative Epistemology.

Michael J. Monahan

Michael Monahan is professor at the University of Memphis. He is a founding member of the Phenomenology Roundtable, and is past Vice-President (2009-2013) and current Treasurer of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. His primary philosophical interests are in questions of oppression and liberation, with a particular emphasis on race and racism. He draws primarily on Africana and phenomenological texts and traditions in his work. His publications include: The Creolizing Subject: Race, Reason, and the Politics of Purity (Fordham University Press, 2011); Creolizing Hegel (Rowman and Littlefield International, 2017); and “The Concept of Privilege: A Critical Appraisal,” The South African Journal of Philosophy 33, no. 1, (2014).

Esme G. Murdock

Esme G. Murdock is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at San Diego State University. She works in the areas of environmental philosophy and environmental ethics and social and political philosophy, with particular attention to environmental justice, philosophies of race and gender, and settler colonial theory. Her research explores the intersections of social/political relations and environmental health, integrity, and agency. Specifically, her work troubles the purported stability of dominant, largely euro-descendent, and settler-colonial philosophies through centering conceptions of land and relating to land found within African American, Afro-Diasporic, and Indigenous eco-philosophies. She has work published in Environmental Values, the Journal of Global Ethics, and The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of the City.