Epistemic Freedom: Itineraries of a Concept

Abstract

The concept of epistemic freedom, which I introduced in Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonization (2018), is elaborated in this article to give it context and to highlights its itineraries. This reflective article provides five problematic epistemes that necessitates struggles for epistemic freedom. These are racist, (en)slave, colonial/imperial, endocentric/patriarchal, and capitalist/neoliberal epistemes. These inextricably intertwined epistemes are constitutive of Eurocentric epistemologies and its reproductions at a world scale and make it difficult for alternative epistemologies from the Global South to flourish. They also underpin contemporary global economy and its asymmetrical power dynamics, which continues to marginalise decolonial ways of thinking, seeing, and praxes.