Coloniality in the scramble for African knowledge: a decolonial political perspective

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Periodical article

Title:	Coloniality in the scramble for African knowledge: a decolonial political perspective
Author:	Mpofu, William Jethro
Year:	2013
Periodical:	Africanus (ISSN 0304-615X)
Volume:	43
Issue:	2
Pages:	105-117
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Africa
Subjects:	postcolonialism epistemology pan-Africanism historiography African identity
Abstract:	The paper demonstrates how Eurocentric naming and description of Africa and expression of the African historical and political condition are infected with coloniality. This epistemic infection manifests itself in distortions, disfigurations and condemnations of Africa and the African. Africans have responded and resisted colonial knowledge of Africa with provinces of combative thought and knowledge in the shape of negritude, pan-Africanism, nationalism, Marxism, Afrikology and Afrocentrism, including black consciousness. Decolonial thought and its view on 'unthinking' Eurocentric epistemologies on Africa can be used to unpack the hidden elements of coloniality in the scramble for African knowledge. The author opts for such an African decolonial turn to unmask the limitations of modern knowledge and its link to coloniality, but also to adopt another thinking that calls for plurality and intercultural dialogue, especially within the global South. This points to the need to ground African knowledge of Africa in Africa with its genealogy rooted in African modes of thought, history and experiences. Bibliogr., sum. [ASC Leiden abstract]