{"id":1040,"date":"2021-08-09T19:22:21","date_gmt":"2021-08-09T19:22:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/usablehistory.com\/?p=1040"},"modified":"2021-10-16T23:10:00","modified_gmt":"2021-10-16T23:10:00","slug":"what-does-decolonizing-knowledge-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usablehistory.com\/fr\/what-does-decolonizing-knowledge-mean\/","title":{"rendered":"Qu\u2019est-ce que veut dire \u00ab d\u00e9coloniser le savoir \u00bb ?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.27.3″ custom_padding=”||0px|||” locked=”off” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.10″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.27.3″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_blurb url_new_window=”on” image=”https:\/\/usablehistory.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Audra-Dipte\u0301e-Photo-scaled.jpg” icon_placement=”left” image_max_width=”48px” content_max_width=”1100px” _builder_version=”4.11.3″ header_font=”Cardo|700|||||||” header_font_size=”17px” body_font=”||||||||” body_font_size=”17px” body_line_height=”1em” link_option_url_new_window=”on” hover_enabled=”0″ border_radii_image=”on|70px|70px|70px|70px” box_shadow_style_image=”preset1″ locked=”off” global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″]

Walter Rodney. Photo credit: Huntley Archives, London Metropolitan Archives<\/span>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/h4>[\/et_pb_blurb][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ text_font_size=”20px” text_orientation=”justify” max_width=”600px” module_alignment=”center” text_text_align=”justify” locked=”off” global_colors_info=”{}”]

To colonise something is to undertake a political act.\u00a0 Hence any efforts at decolonisation must also be understood as a political act.\u00a0 Furthermore, if we take this line of thinking to its logical conclusion, the process of decolonising also means a \u2018changing of the guards.\u2019\u00a0 The colonial gate keepers are removed (or they remove themselves) so that others can take responsibility for formerly colonised spaces.<\/p>\n

Since very little \u2013 if any \u2013 of this is happening in the Ivory Tower of the Global North, it seems necessary to think critically about what the current claims to actively \u2018decolonise knowledge\u2019 really represent and in what contexts it can authentically<\/em> occur. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the current initiatives to decolonise knowledge is what seems like either a case of willful historical amnesia or an astounding level of ignorance about past endeavours.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/usablehistory.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/magazine-18.png” _builder_version=”3.27.3″ custom_margin=”49px||50px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.10.8″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”||||||||” text_font_size=”25px” global_colors_info=”{}”]

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Historically, the process of declonising knowledge … was informed by the realities of colonised peoples … The result was an organic<\/em> development of anti-colonial epistemologies that could challenge colonial historicity.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default” text_font_size=”20px” text_orientation=”justify” max_width=”600px” module_alignment=”center” min_height=”1137.2px” custom_margin=”||68px|||” global_colors_info=”{}”]

There is a well-established tradition of decolonising knowledge stemming from intellectuals of the Global South that extends well over a century.\u00a0 Historians specialising on the Caribbean will know, for example, the work of the Afro-Trinidadian John Jacob Thomas who challenged the interpretations that the Oxford-trained English historian James Anthony Froude presented in his book The English in the West Indies<\/em> or the Bow of Ulysses <\/em>(1888).<\/p>\n

In his book, Froude gave the perspective of a colonial apologist. \u00a0He asserted that slavery \u2018was the first step to emancipation\u2019 from the natural inclinations of people of African descent and on the question of adult suffrage, he believed it unjust to subject whites in the Caribbean to \u2018the most dangerous consequences of a negro political supremacy.\u2019<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, Froude\u2019s work received relatively favourable reviews in journals and newspapers in England, despite the fact that he had no scholarly expertise on the Caribbean region and his book was based on observations made during a voyage to the region. \u00a0In other words, nineteenth century British assumptions about whiteness and masculinity guaranteed him a level of intellectual credibility in England.<\/p>\n

In the Caribbean, however, his work would come under sharp critique.\u00a0 One year later (1889), John Jacob Thomas responded with a polemic entitled Froudacity: West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude<\/em>.\u00a0 As the title of his book suggests, he took issue with the audacity (hence the term \u2018Froudacity\u2019\u2026) of James Froude to assume he could accurately depict Caribbean realities and suggested that Froude\u2019s book was little more than a collection of British spun fables.<\/p>\n

Thomas offered an anti-colonial Afro-Caribbean response to Froude\u2019s Eurocentric colonial narrative.\u00a0 Nor was he alone in attempting to do so.\u00a0 Others who took issue with Froude include Charles Spencer Salmon and Nicholas Darnell Davis in their works The Caribbean Confederation <\/em>(1888) and Mr. Froude\u2019s Negrophobia or Don Quixote as a Cook\u2019s Tourist (<\/em>1888).\u00a0 A few years later, the Afro-Jamaican Theophilus Scholes would publish critiques of both racism and colonialism in his books Sugar and the West Indies<\/em> (1897), The British Empire and Alliances<\/em> (1899), Chamberlain and Chamberlainism<\/em> (under pseudonym in 1903), and the two volume study Glimpses of the Ages<\/em> (1905, 1908).<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_gallery gallery_ids=”415,416,427,429″ orientation=”portrait” show_pagination=”off” _builder_version=”4.10.8″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”RGBA(0,0,0,0)” text_orientation=”center” width=”53%” module_alignment=”center” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_gallery][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default” text_font_size=”20px” text_orientation=”justify” max_width=”600px” module_alignment=”center” min_height=”1137.2px” locked=”off” global_colors_info=”{}”]

These efforts were continued in the early twentieth century by other anti-colonial thinkers such as CLR James, Aim\u00e9 C\u00e9saire, Franz Fanon, Eric Williams, Fernando Ortiz, and George Padmore.\u00a0 Having lived under colonial and imperial political structures, intellectuals such as these had no illusions about the necessity of \u2018decolonising knowledge.\u2019\u00a0 They also knew that it was a necessary precursor to attaining political decolonisation and sovereignty.\u00a0 In the words of the Africanist scholar Amina Mama, these early efforts to decolonise knowledge were born out of \u2018an ethic of liberation.\u2019\u00a0 They understood that knowledge was usable.\u00a0 In the same way that Eurocentric historical narratives served the creation of colonial empires, anti-colonial intellectuals knew that they needed to create historically informed counter narratives that would serve the interests of colonised peoples during the process of political decolonisation.<\/p>\n

Therein lies the problem.\u00a0 Historically, the process of decolonising knowledge originated from colonised spaces and was informed by the realities of colonised peoples who had no choice but to survive within social, political, and economic structures that shaped their experiences of exclusion and oppression.\u00a0 The result was an organic <\/em>development of anti-colonial epistemologies that could challenge colonial historicity.<\/p>\n

To be clear, there is no question that all <\/em>academics can find ways to challenge hegemonic historical narratives.\u00a0 But can they all decolonise knowledge?\u00a0<\/em> What is being questioned is the audacity (or Froudacity<\/em> in the words of J.J. Thomas!) to assert that decolonising <\/em>knowledge can be led by scholars who have not only personally benefitted from practices supported by colonial thought but who have also been trained to accept methodologies that adopt what, the well-known critic of Eurocentric thought, James Blaut has referred to as \u2018the colonizer\u2019s model of the world.\u2019\u00a0 Let us not forget that universities all over the globe have traditionally served as tools of empire and many are organized \u2013 to this very day \u2013 around practices of exclusion.<\/p>\n

If we are to use history as our guide, there can be little doubt that the decolonisation of knowledge requires the use of epistemologies forged \u2018in the struggle\u2019 against domination in all its manifestations.\u00a0 Decolonising knowledge requires different methodologies, accessing counter archives, and directly confronting the ways in which power has shaped both historicity and memory.\u00a0 As suggested in the introduction of the recent book Knowledges Born in the Struggle <\/em>(2019), it is the epistemic South<\/em>, which can be found in any part of the globe, that decolonises knowledge produced by the epistemic North<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Sceptics like myself are inclined to see some of the current claims to decolonise knowledge as the appropriation of a concept without a clear understanding of what it really means.\u00a0 On even more cynical days, I might be tempted to think that some of these efforts are little more than an attempt to contain the radical thought required to inspire the radical action necessary for fundamental change \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

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