Knowledge production and narratives in Africa: the epistemic shift

Felwine Sarr, April 2018

The issue of knowledge production in Africa is of crucial importance at a time when economies are based on innovation and knowledge. The African continent faces enormous challenges in the areas of education, health and basic needs. But the issue of knowledge production in Africa is not limited to that of economic growth and development.

The following epistemological questions: what kind of knowledge is it? How is this knowledge produced? For what purposes? Constitute fundamental elements for Africans in their struggle for political, cultural and economic emancipation.

In the recent history of the African continent, the ethnological knowledge produced about African societies played a decisive role in the domination exercised by European countries during the colonial period. Knowledge has always been linked to power, domination and coloniality. African societies suffered epistemic violence at the hands of European colonialists. They systematically undermined their languages and their production of meaning in all areas of social life. Knowledge makes it possible to regulate the understanding of the world; in this sense, it constitutes a space of power and coloniality.

To fully understand the challenges currently facing African countries, it is first necessary to consider the geopolitics of knowledge. I will therefore propose, in the first part of my talk, to trace the genealogy of what Mudimbe has called the “colonial library”, and to highlight the role of this colonial library in contemporary African positionality.

In the second part of my lecture, I will analyse the narratives developed on the African continent and show how these discourses influence social dynamics in Africa through the representation of reality they convey. I will place particular emphasis on the need for Africans to forge their own vision of the future, but also to engage more in epistemic change by broadening the conception of what knowledge is and reactivating the knowledge resources rooted in their cultures and

1. The geopolitics of knowledge in African countries.

I.1 Epistemic violence and the colonial library

The body of knowledge on Africa is largely marked by colonial ethnology and anthropology. Valentin Mudimbé has described this corpus as “library colonial“. Since the fifteenth century, the African landscape has been shaped by discourses whose aim was to physically dominate territories, re-educate the mentalities of indigenous populations and integrate local economic histories into a Western perspective.[1] These various forms of knowledge, primarily motivated by a goal of governmentality and aimed at justifying and establishing the colonial enterprise, viewed non-Western countries through the prism of cultural superiority and racial prejudice. Unfortunately, they continue to largely influence the perception of African reality and have become a factor in perpetuating domination or dependence.

In reality, maintaining an economic asymmetry between the colonies and the metropole implied that the latter exercised absolute political control over the colonies. Yet this control would have been impossible without a widely shared belief in the cultural supremacy of the colonisers. It was vitally important for the colonisers to establish this sense of superiority, not only to conquer the land and resources of the colonies, but also their culture and their hearts and minds. As a result, the economic and political injustice inherent in colonisation adds a further layer of cultural injustice. This process is described by Rajeev Bhargava as “epistemic injustice“. It unfolded in the same way in India and in African countries. It begins when the concepts and categories by which a people understands itself and its world are replaced by the concepts and categories of the colonisers.

In this way, the system of meanings and categories enabling the individual and collective orientation of dominated peoples was replaced by the colonizer’s system of meanings and categories, and this was achieved by devaluing the values of local communities, as well as their system of meanings. This process of devaluing the cultural and epistemic frameworks specific to the colonised peoples first takes place within the discourse of the colonisers, and then crystallises in the theoretical (ethnological and anthropological) work carried out by the latter.

For Valentin Mudimbé, Kwasi Wiredu and Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, in order for Africa to fully regain its sovereignty and fecundity, it is urgent to address the issue of liberating African discourse (philosophical, literary and scientific) and establishing African social sciences. For these thinkers, it is important to become the subject of one’s own scientific discourse and to define its practice according to one’s own standards and criteria.

The question facing these thinkers is the price to be paid for adapting to the thought of the other, the consequence of which could well be the pure and simple disappearance of singular socio-historical experiences. How do we get out of a dialectic of “appropriation and alienation”, an appropriation whose corollary is expropriation (losing one’s memory to assimilate that of the other[2])?

The aim is to bring about a radical transformation of the social sciences and humanities as they are currently conceived and taught in African universities. However, to escape the reproduction of mimetic teaching[3], certain preconditions must be met. First and foremost, this requires a thorough understanding of the current ways in which Africa is integrated into the myths of the West.[4] The Westernisation of the African continent is no longer merely at the stage of a theoretical project: “it is an activity in motion”, even if African cultures are fiercely resisting it. Moreover, the first task will be to “clarify the complex question of the links that unite Africa and the West, determining the exercise of thought, the practices of knowledge, the attitudes of beings and ways of life”.[5]

This reconstruction project requires an overhaul of the social sciences, starting with an epistemological integration concerning the objects, methods and status of knowledge produced by the humanities and social sciences as applied to African realities. The deconstruction of colonial (ethnological) reason first involves a radical critique of the discourses produced, their theoretical frameworks, their ideological foundations as well as the logic used to “pathologise Africans”[6] and dominate them.

 In order to restore the full fruitfulness of the African social sciences and humanities, we need to question the universality of social knowledge derived from Western societies. This act of speaking in one’s own name, of casting a critical eye both on Western knowledge about Africa and on the discourses that Africans maintain about their own history[7] and their own culture, insofar as these forms of knowledge find their justification within the same Western theoretical apparatus that has locked Africa into a narrative of barbarism, primitivism, savagery, orality and paganism.

For Wiredu and Mudimbé, in order to finally escape a scientific alienation that constantly threatens them, African researchers must assume responsibility for a reflection that focuses on their own destiny, establishing a scientific discourse that would be the expression of material life within their own socio-political contexts. This activity of reflection must be anchored in the present, paying particular attention to its specific archaeological environment as well as to the real trends of the various African societies and their most complete and concrete expressions. It is a question of integrating the true complexity of African social formations and no longer considering them as mere carbon copies of Western history, but as possessing their own cultural and historical specificity.

 To reflect, you have to start from your own situation and your own structures. “The singularity of historical experiences is self-evident. We can attribute our own standards of intelligibility to each experience without having to resort to instruments or privileged categories derived from another experience[8].” There are internal and dynamic logics specific to each historical field.

Mudimbé wonders whether the desired African discourse could see the light of day by replacing European languages with African ones. Changing the linguistic instrument of knowledge and scientific production could lead to an epistemological break and open up an indispensable path towards a new and welcome adventure in Africa, in the same way that, by transposing into their language the methods, techniques and uses of knowledge inherited from Egypt, the defenders of Greek thought triggered a reorganisation of knowledge and life, the essential order of which is still being worked out. On this point, Mudimbé is in perfect agreement with Wiredu and Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, who believe that a return to African languages and the rediscovery of their vitality would not only enable the decolonisation of minds and imaginations, but would also reveal the interiorities and signifying universes inscribed in a world order that intimately shapes meaning for Africans. Languages open up galaxies, universes and worlds that need to be explored. African languages are privileged points of entry for taking care of and managing the cultures in question and their content in terms of thought and forms of knowledge. The work of Benveniste and Wittgenstein[9] highlighted the link between thought and the syntactic and grammatical structure of languages.

The main obstacle to such an attempt nevertheless lies in the definition of an epistemological field, i.e. the specific objects to be apprehended, but also the singular methods enabling this to be achieved. The question of epistemological decentring has been the subject of debate among some African philosophers. A recurrent criticism of the Western conception of knowledge is that it overestimates the prerogatives of the subject, based on the illusion that this subject, by its own means (reason and/or the senses), can produce thought that takes account of the complexity of reality. The trap of European methodology is to select a single criterion to explain the subject. Issiaka Prosper Lalêyé[10] questions the desire to produce, as the subject of knowledge, a reality that is exclusively subordinated to the analysis of experience and the debate around reason. He criticises the fruitfulness of a methodological approach based on the principle of the excluded third[11]. To understand reality, this approach distinguishes the subject from the object. The punctualisation of the object and the fragmentation of reality into tiny parts that we then try to put back together are the result of a residual positivism within the Western gnoseological tradition. This tradition is the heir to atomism, which originated over two thousand years ago. This approach has proved useful for the development of physics and the exact sciences; but Lalêyé is quick to demonstrate how unproductive this method is in the humanities and the social sciences, since the objects of study have depth and the subject is not detached from the object. As for quantum physics, the position of the observer modifies the thing observed.

A generation of young African thinkers has revived this debate and framed it within a dialogue between shared epistemologies and experiences. Nadia Yala Kisukidi[12] proposes to lay the foundations of a new epistemology by rethinking “historical experiences based on domination in order to rewrite them within a shared history; a hope of reciprocal recognition, which restores to each person his or her history, culture and dignity”[13].

Nevertheless, the preconditions for dialogue and the constitution of a shared experience require a rebalancing of power relations, especially as there is also a project to re-establish the paradigms of domination. Blondin Cissé notes that the attempt in France to hold a referendum on (Article IV[14] of the law of 23 February) in 2005,[15] evoking the positive role played by colonisation, or the use of terms such as “Third World”, “underdeveloped countries”, “developing countries”, are the result of this project to perpetuate the epistemes of domination and the hegemony of Western culture.

Constructing a postcolonial library. Bringing together all the libraries (anti-colonial, colonial and various archives), as well as the knowledge and reflections that are being disseminated within African societies

[1] Valentin Mudimbé, The invention of Africa: gnosis, philosophy and the order of knowledge (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988).

[2] Justin Kalulu Bisanswa, “Valentin Yves Mudimbé: Réflexion sur les sciences humaines et sociales en Afrique”, Cahiers d’études africaines No. 160 (2000); pp. 705-722.

[3] Thomas Mpoyi-Buatu, La Reproduction (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1986).

[4] Valentin Yves Mudimbé, L’Odeur du Père, (Paris: Présence africaine, 1982).

[5] “To escape the grip of the West, we must first become fully aware of the price we have to pay to detach ourselves from it : This presupposes knowing the extent to which the West, perhaps insidiously, closely resembles us; it presupposes knowing what enables us to think against the grain of Western forms of thought, but also what still remains Western in our recourse against this Western thought, what resides in our thinking and is perhaps still a ruse that opposes us and through which it continues, motionless and elsewhere, awaiting our arrival. ” Ibid, 12-13.

[6] “The West created the savage in order to civilize it, created the concept of the underdeveloped in order to develop it, and that of the primitive in order to found ethnology.” Ibid, p. 57.

[7] “Proclaiming a new discourse that expresses our hopes as much as our illusions, today. But this is only truly possible as a choice if, beforehand, we have undertaken, today, a new critical and radical reading of the past, its traditions, its mythical apparatuses [mythical pumps] and their networks of meaning.” Valentin Yves Mudimbé, Les Corps glorieux des mots et des êtres (Montreal: Humanitas, 2005).

[8] Mudimbé, L’Odeur du Père, p. 185.

[9] Émile Benveniste, “Categories of thought and categories of language”, Problèmes de linguistique générale,(Paris: Gallimard, 1971), pp. 63-64. Ludwig Wittgenstein: “[…] the limits of my language signify the limits of my world […]” Tractatus logico-philosophicus, Gallimard, 1961. Alexis Kagamé, a Rwandan philosopher, has shown the extent to which Aristotle’s ontology derives from Greek grammar.

[10] Issiaka Propser Lalêyé, paper presented at the colloquium “Le Clos et l’Ouvert: acteurs religieux et usages de la rue“, organised at the Gaston-Berger University of Saint-Louis (29 October 2014), by the uFRC, the CRAC and the FMSH.

[11] This concept is also being challenged at the very heart of Western epistemology by proponents of quantum physics and thinkers such as Nicholas Georgescu-Rogen, an advocate of transdisciplinarity and the principle of the included third.

[12] Nadia Yala Kisukidi, “Decolonising philosophy: Or philosophy as an anthropological object”, in Pensée contemporaine et pratiques sociales en Afrique : penser le mouvement, journal Présence africaine No. 192 (February 2015): pp. 83-98.

[13] Marie-Claude Smouts, *La Situation postcoloniale* (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2007), p. 33.

[14] “University programmes notably recognise the positive role of the French presence abroad, particularly in North Africa, and give the history and sacrifices of French army troops stationed in these territories their rightful place.”

[15] Act no. 2005-158 of 23 February 2005, known as the “Colonialism Act”, recognising the national contribution in favour of repatriated French citizens.

I.2 The humanities from an African perspective: the epistemological turn

The epistemic shift I am advocating is not simply a matter of better applying Western social sciences (the so-called humanities) to African realities, or better adapting the latter to local culture. What I mean is that we must recognise the diversity of approaches to reality according to civilisations and eras, the plurality of modes of knowledge, as well as gnosiological and epistemological relativity.

I propose to rethink the plurality of paths of human thought, starting from the idea of an equality of principle between the different schools of thought, while recognising their incommensurability. This leads us to consider these different schools of thought from the point of view of their horizons and the configurations of the imaginable (thinkable) that they propose, as unique paths of the mind that have developed in parallel, shaped by the cultures from which they have emerged. (This does not mean that there is no circulation of ideas and thought between regions and periods)

Thinking about these issues in an African context requires a change of perspective. We need to take account of the complexity of African social structures and understand them in their cultural and historical specificity. This requires a change of position within established fields of knowledge and a reinterpretation; a reflective exercise that pays particular attention to its historical context and the current trends of the societies under study.

This restructuring project requires us to rethink the social sciences in depth, which implies an epistemological rethinking of the objects, methods and status of the knowledge produced by the human and social sciences, as applied to African realities. The main obstacle to such an approach lies in the difficulty of defining an epistemological field, i.e. the specific objects to be examined, but also the methods needed to do so. A recurring criticism of the Western conception of knowledge is that it overestimates the prerogatives of the subject based on the illusion that the latter, by his own means (reason and/or sense), can produce thought that takes account of the complexity of reality. The pitfall of European methodology consists in selecting a single criterion to explain reality. Moreover, in terms of knowledge, its approach is based on the desire to produce a reality governed exclusively by experience and reason. The fruitfulness of the methodological approach based on the principle of the excluded third[1] will be examined. This approach distinguishes the subject from the object in order to interpret reality. It transforms objects into momentary entities and breaks down reality into minute portions that we then try to reconstitute. It is part of a residual positivism in the Western gnosiological tradition, based on an atomism that goes back two thousand years. This approach has proved useful for the development of physics and the natural sciences; but it is much less fruitful when it comes to the human and social sciences, because the objects studied are multidimensional and the subject is not separated from the object. Just as in quantum physics, the position of the observer modifies the object observed.

But, more fundamentally, it is a question of acquiring a deeper knowledge of African societies and cultures, which are also based on their own gnosiological criteria. To achieve this, it is necessary to adopt other ways of understanding reality, beyond scientific knowledge as it currently stands. Exploring the relatively unknown territories of African ontomythologies and epistemogonies allows for a more open approach to the various types of knowledge that have helped to preserve the future of African societies. It is necessary to explore the possibilities offered by other forms of knowledge and other interpretations of reality. These are forms of knowledge that have demonstrated their long-term effectiveness in different areas of human activity: therapeutic and environmental knowledge, technical know-how, social, historical, psychological, economic and agronomic knowledge. This knowledge has ensured the survival, growth and sustainability of African societies. In order to mobilise this knowledge, it is necessary to explore African cosmogonies, myths, diverse cultural expressions and linguistic resources.

We will also reflect on a theory of knowledge limited by the boundaries of the Western view of knowledge, questioning the exclusivity of the logocentric episteme and the framing of modes of comprehensibility by a single mode of written thought. This study re-examines the question of knowledge at its very source. It aims to rethink the conditions that make knowledge possible.  “What can I know?” is the question posed by Kant in his Critique of pure reason. “How is knowledge possible?” These questions defined physics and metaphysics in the 18th century.

The questions we might ask ourselves instead are: Can we acquire knowledge other than through experience? Can we acquire knowledge through the senses? What do the arts and non-discursive ways of thinking teach us about reality? Can we envisage an epistemology of the senses?

This reflection on knowledge will be developed by examining both the objects of the epistemological quest and its modes of perceiving reality. Since Aristotle, explaining has meant determining causes or identifying the first cause. Considering explanation as the only way of thinking about the world is intrinsically biased. Linear causality” thinking has a limit, and this is its primary cause. Complex and dialogical thinking (Morin) has made it possible to put this mode of interpreting reality into perspective, by revealing its limits.

Human intelligence lies in our ability to go beyond the different possibilities of thought, to understand them and to create a dialogue between them. The aim, however, is not to bridge the gap between these different approaches to knowledge and reality by means of a unitary and convergent dialectic. It will be neither a systematic research project containing the ultimate truth, nor a summary, but rather an attempt to present these possibilities in order to produce something intelligible from their self-reflection.

[1] This view is also being challenged within Western epistemology by proponents of quantum physics and thinkers such as Nicholas Georgescu-Rogen, who has promoted transdisciplinarity and the principle of the excluded third.

2. The geopolitics of knowledge in African countries.

The African continent has arguably seen the worst interpretations of its social and political dynamics in recent centuries.

The image of the African continent is surrounded by a multitude of clichés and stereotypes. We should not underestimate the enormous load of symbolic violence that permeates the collective imagination about Africa, in the form of failures, deprivations, handicaps, even human deficiencies and congenital deformities, conveyed by the media and many literary accounts. (Land of “Trump” and “shitholes”)

The tendency of others to project their fantasies onto the African continent goes back a long way. In ancient times, Pliny the Elder asserted, “There is always something new coming from Africa.” In his work entitled History natural, he wondered about these strange animal species that the continent kept revealing to the Roman Empire, which bordered Africa by the Mediterranean coast. Over the centuries of conquest, explorers and adventurers have projected their most original and scabrous fantasies onto this mysterious Africa. For some, the continent became a kind of wonderland, an outlet for so-called civilised nations to give free rein to their deepest expressions of repressed barbarism. Anything seemed permissible on this continent: the plundering and despoiling of lives and cultures, genocides (such as that of the Herero and Namaqua from 1904 to 1907, in what is now Namibia), rape, scientific experiments; all forms of violence quietly reached their apogee here.

From the colonial period to the present day, representations of the African continent have not really evolved. The images that have surrounded Africa in recent decades are those of a continent facing major economic, social and political challenges; and, more broadly, those of a continent that has yet to make progress in a number of areas. A continent that is systematically lagging behind others (from a comparative perspective) or experiencing dystopian situations.

Some of these challenges are very real, particularly in the areas of education, health, the economy, the well-being of populations, political stability and human security in certain regions, etc. That said, it is important to stress that the reality of the African continent is far more complex.

Africa is a vast continent that is home to a variety of cultures, ethnic groups and historical dynamics, making it a region of great diversity. However, despite this diversity, the entire continent has been subjected to colonial domination over the last few centuries. This has had repercussions on its historical development and on the political and social dynamics of African societies. Some of the main challenges facing contemporary Africa have their origins in these recent historical developments.

As I have already mentioned, the African continent is facing multiple challenges. Remedying social imbalances and meeting the basic needs of Africans is an urgent task for African societies. But it is important, in my view, not to confine ourselves to a project that is limited to meeting basic needs.

However, what the African continent suffers from goes far beyond a simple lack of branding; rather, it is a deficit in thinking about and creating its own metaphors for the future. Africa lacks a teleonomy[1] that is autonomous and endogenous, stemming from its own reflection on its current situation, its destiny and the futures it will forge for itself.

 A civilisation is not based solely on material values; it is also built through spiritual, philosophical and ethical values that give it meaning and direction. It is a question of redefining the vision of Africa, the representation of the continent, and of managing to see the African continent not just as a problem, but also as a project.

 The point here is to decipher the social forms produced by our societies: the quality of human, cultural and institutional relations, the dignity of everyday life; the multiplicity of signs and the profusion of meanings.

Social change is closely linked to the construction of narratives about the future, about the way in which a human group or society represents and projects itself, about the goals it wishes to achieve, and about the values that occupy the forefront of its scale of priorities (solidarity, inclusion, or competition and selfishness…)

 The current demographic trends observed on the African continent are…

Since 1950, Africa’s population has increased tenfold. Today, Africa is home to one billion people and, within three decades, Africa’s population will exceed 2.5 billion and will account for 25% of the world’s population (Africa will have the youngest population). In terms of economic resources, a third of all natural resources are found in Africa, as well as 60% of arable land. Economic growth in African countries has been higher than the world average for the past twenty years.

[1] A purpose of a mechanical nature at work in nature and which, by extension, would be a purpose postulated by groups or individuals.