Rethinking Knowledge Production in Africa: ‘Afrocentric Epistemology’ as an Emancipatory Discourse

Abstract

Afrocentric epistemology’ implies an inquiry that seeks to escape from a Eurocentric hegemony in knowledge production, in combination with a search for an alternative epistemic order situated in the African weltanschauung. Mainstream organizational theories in the social sciences and humanities remained as bare reflections of the collective European subjectivity and Western dominant ideology, a posture that negates the world views of Africans. A proper African episteme will of necessity de-exoticize Africa and correct its reduction to banalities of want and despair. However, cognizant of the limitations and partiality of all knowledge and a vigorous need for studying Africa in its own specificity, an emancipatory discourse first aims to re-problematize explanations of phenomenon related to Africa away from Eurocentric attitudes and conceptual frameworks. Emancipation of the discourse needs to rest on its pragmatic adjustment regarding Black disorientation, de-centeredness, and lack of agency via epistemic anarchy. Ngugi’s linguistic concerns are also essential to avoid disenchantment of an Afrocentric epistemology couched in a former colonizer’s language.