Past MSCP Course

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Knowledge Cultures: Rethinking Epistemology From African And Indigenous Australian Perspectives

Lecturer: Augustine Obi

Originally Taught: Winter School 2024

In his inspirational essay, “Hegel at the Court of Ashanti,” Robert Bernasconi examines Hegel's remarks on blacks in his Lectures on the Philosophy of World History and Lectures on the History of Religion and as a result, he takes exception to Hegel’s comment that "[the black] race has no 'historical interest of its own.” Rather than attributing Hegel’s claim to a culture-bound bias irrelevant to philosophy, Bernasconi suggests that “after rehearsing some of the more familiar objections to Hegel's verdict against [blacks],” he would  “turn the tables and put Hegel on trial…to take him before the court of the Ashanti, where his use of evidence (for the description of the black race as barbaric, primitive, and as a people with prelogical mentality) can be interrogated” (Bernasconi 1998: 41) to expose the myth of western modernity that locates the provenance of knowledge within the western philosophical tradition.

Whether one dismisses Hegel’s comment as a stand-alone null-point incapable of displacing his entire systematic philosophy or not, the reality is that Hegel’s perception has serious implications for non-European histories and their epistemic traditions, especially concerning their legitimacy and real existence, and the general consideration of their status as second order to Western history and epistemology.

This short course will attempt to explore how knowledge is framed and characterised within African and Indigenous Australian contexts. It aims to provide a unique and timely window into the different ways of knowing expressed by the Africans and Indigenous Australians which are often covered over or caged-in by the dominant western epistemological paradigms. Ultimately, the course seeks to use African and Indigenous Australian epistemological perspectives as an epistemological mirror through which epistemology can be reimagined. At a period when the call for epistemic decolonisation is gaining traction globally, this course will bring together leading African philosophers and key Indigenous Australian thinkers to shine a much-needed spotlight on different patterns of knowledge and how each constitutes an autonomous and authentic form of knowledge articulation.

Lecture One - ‘The Dreaming Emu’ And The Quest For Epistemic Liberation: Delineation Of  Indigenous Australian and African Knowledge Cultures

To begin, we engage with the interpretation of the complexity and depth of the Australian Indigenous knowledge culture as the metaphorical ‘Dreaming Emu’ that was “trapped in the net” of colonial invasion, and the long history of destruction and denial surrounding its existence and generative power (Bowers 2010). Based on this symbolism, we will then articulate the journey of exploration which has opened Western eyes to the dangers of a single knowledge provenance, and the different paradigms of Indigenous ‘knowing and being’ which offer substantive and unique worldviews that ought be recognised and celebrated. Ultimately, in this first lecture, we will analyse the ‘caged Dreaming Emu’ in terms of the resemblance it bears to the epistemic injustice that attended African colonisation, and the ways in which repudiation of the epistemic hegemony of the West has provided the opportunity to see in this caged ‘Dreaming Emu’ a ‘hidden different epistemology’ that warrants attention, respect, and engagement (Wyndier Kennedy 2011).  Having seen how the ‘caged Dreaming Emu’ symbolises the specific violence that insidiously undermined the capacity of colonised Africans and Indigenous Australians as autonomous knowers, we now turn attention, in the second half of the lecture, to attempt a portrayal of the natures of knowledge in African and Indigenous Australian epistemology. We will see how, any epistemological discourse about Africans and Indigenous Australians cannot be comprehensively understood without reference to “their cognitive relations with the world around them, which is influenced by their broader understanding or conception of reality” (Jimoh and Thomas 2015: 54). The important questions that therefore attend to these epistemological assumptions are: How can we specifically characterise these knowledge claims that are premised or derived from peoples’ widely held beliefs systems and practices? And what is the fundamental difference between these two knowledge cultures and other cultures like the Western (or even the Oriental) approach to knowledge and knowing?

Recommended Readings

  • Bernasconi, R. 2001. Hegel at the Court of the Ashanti. Hegel After Derida. Criticism, 43:110-115.
  • Bowers, R. 2010, PLACE: Beyond an Indigenous critical analysis of fine art practice, discourse and culture and the contested nature of minority identity in the mainstream – articulating an Indigenous aesthetic, Cape Breton University Art Gallery, Retrieved 22 January 2010 from http://www.cbu.ca/artgallery/exhibitions/place/Artist%20Essay%20Final.pdf.
  • Chemhuru, M. 2023. THE ONTOLOGICAL FOUNDATION OF AFRICAN KNOWLEDGE A Critical Discourse in African Communitarian Knowledge. African Epistemology: Essays on Being and Knowledge. Taylor and Francis. Pp. 91-104.
  • Jimoh, A. and Thomas, J. 2015. An African Epistemological Approach to Epistemic Certitude and Scepticism. Research on Humanities and Social Sciences, 5(11): 54–61. www.iiste.org. ISSN (Paper)2224-5766 ISSN (Online) 2225-0484 (Online)
  • Dwayne Andrew, K. 2011. Dreaming Emu: Indigenous cultural empowerment through art as therapy – Men & healing from the violence of colonisation. University of New England, Retrieved 23 May 2024 from 01_Front_Kennedy_PDFA.pdf (une.edu.au).
  • Ikhane, P. 2023. THE ONTOLOGICAL FOUNDATION OF AFRICAN KNOWLEDGE A Critical Discourse in African Communitarian Knowledge. African Epistemology: Essays on Being and Knowledge. Taylor and Francis. Pp. 19-34.

Lecture Two - Understanding Afro-Relational Knowledge

Lecture two will begin with a comprehensive exposition of the nature and characteristics of knowledge in African epistemology. Given Africa’s diverse geography and cultures, we will explicate the sense in which we understand Africa and its knowledge cultures. African approaches to knowledge are derived from the African belief in a universe composed of immaterial realities like spirits, deities, and the interaction or relation of these incorporeal realities with the material world. From our exposition, we will discover how African approaches to knowledge reflect a certain social or communitarian epistemology, and at the same time distinguish themselves as knowledge cultures by being characterised by a cognitive process involving what Peter Aloysius Ikhane refers to as “universe of harmony”: harmony  between the observable and non-observable aspects of reality (Ikhane 2023: 20).

Key References

  • Jimoh, A. and Thomas, J. 2015. An African Epistemological Approach to Epistemic Certitude and Scepticism. Research on Humanities and Social Sciences, 5(11): 54–61. www.iiste.org. ISSN (Paper)2224-5766 ISSN (Online) 
  • Dwayne Andrew, K. 2011. Dreaming Emu: Indigenous cultural empowerment through art as therapy – Men & healing from the violence of colonisation. University of New England, Retrieved 23 May 2024 from 01_Front_Kennedy_PDFA.pdf (une.edu.au).
  • Chemhuru, M. 2023. THE ONTOLOGICAL FOUNDATION OF AFRICAN KNOWLEDGE A Critical Discourse in African Communitarian Knowledge. African Epistemology: Essays on Being and Knowledge. Taylor and Francis. Pp. 91-104.
  • Ikhane, P. 2023. THE ONTOLOGICAL FOUNDATION OF AFRICAN KNOWLEDGE A Critical Discourse in African Communitarian Knowledge. African Epistemology: Essays on Being and Knowledge. Taylor and Francis. Pp. 19-34.

Lecture Three And Four - Embodied Rituals, Ceremonial Spiritualism, And Immanent Connection To ‘Country’: Indigenous Australians And Their ‘Relational Dynamics Of Knowing’

After analysing African epistemology as an interwoven experience grounded on the relation of knowledge to being, we will then explore the Indigenous Australian epistemology. Just like the continent of Africa, we will explore the long history of deep knowing in Indigenous Australian communities, and how through their connection to ‘Country’ or ‘land’ Indigenous knowledge is transmitted and shared through ritualised practices. In this way, knowing is premised on historical experiences that are not only adaptive, but also experiences that embrace the whole of Indigenous science, art, ecology, wisdom, spirituality, and beliefs which Samuel Curkpatrick has referred to as ‘relational dynamics of knowing.’ To further appreciate the interwoven relational dynamics that inhere in Indigenous Australian epistemology, we will examine Samuel Curkpatrick’s interpretations of Mandawuy Yunupiŋu’s exploration of Yolŋu thought, “the performance of manikay (public ceremonial song) by Wägilak singer Daniel Wilfred; Tyson Yunkaporta’s conceptualisation of “turnaround”; and Wanta Jampijinpa Pawu’s framework of ngurra-kurlu (home-having)” (Curkpatrick 2023:658) to discern how each of these ceremonial practices engenders an interactive embodied knowing. 

Key References

  • Althaus, C. 2020. Different paradigms of evidence and knowledge: Recognising, honouring, and celebrating Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Australian Journal of Public Administration. 79:187–207.
  • Burri Regula Valérie & Joseph Dumit (2008) ‘Social studies of scientific imaging and visualization’, Ch 13 in Ed Hackett et al., The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, MIT Press: p300.
  • Curkpatrick, S. 2023. Soundings on a Relational Epistemology: Encountering Indigenous Knowledge through Interwoven Experience. Journal of Intercultural Studies. 44: 658–677.
  • Curkpatrick, S. 2023. Difference within Identity: Recognition, Growth and the Circularity of Indigenous Knowledge. JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIAN STUDIES 2023. 47: 547–565.
  • Cameron, L. 2021. Australian Indigenous sensory knowledge systems in creative Practices. Creative Arts in Education and Therapy – Eastern and Western Perspectives. 7(2):114–127.
  • Ellen, R. F., Peter Parkes, Alan Bicker (2000) Indigenous Environmental Knowledge and Its Transformations: Critical Anthropological Perspectives. Psychology Press.

Lecture Five - ‘Round’ Versus ‘Square’ Knowledge, Or ‘Circular’ Versus ‘Linear’ Knowledge: Recognising Knowledge In Mutual Formation And Our Responsibility To One Another

Having considered what is integral to recognising African and Indigenous Australian ways of knowing, we can describe the ways of knowing of Indigenous Australians as circular thinking and the Western knowledge paradigm as linear (Curkpatrick 2023). This critical epistemological distinction has also been described by David Claudie as a “difference between ‘round’ and ‘square’ thinking, the former understood as typifying Indigenous knowledge, and the latter characteristic of Western knowledge” (Claudie 2004).

We will conclude the course with some comments about the significance of the decolonisation of knowledge for the inauguration of an alternative cross-cultural knowledge production and sharing that privileges no particular knowledge tradition, but rather seeks to cohere “characteristics such as respect, attentiveness and friendship to motivate collaborative research and constitute knowledge within unique localities of people and place”  (Curkpatrick 2023). This cross-cultural knowledge is not enclosed in an abstract systematisation, but is rather generated through “life giving interactions of similarity and difference” (Curkpatrick 2023: 658, 673), echoing the words of Sir Doung Nicholls: “you can play a tune on black keys, you can play a tune on white keys, but both are needed for perfect harmony.”

Key References

  • Claudie, D.  2004. “Ancient but new”: policy development from the ground up’, presentation to Community Engagement Programs for Improved Collaborative Indigenous Policy Development. Smith, B. ‘We got our own management’: local knowledge, government, and development in Cape York Peninsula. Australian Aboriginal Studies. 2005/2:4-15.
  • Curkpatrick, S. 2023. Soundings on a Relational Epistemology: Encountering Indigenous Knowledge through Interwoven Experience. Journal of Intercultural Studies. 44: 658–677.
  • Curkpatrick, S. 2023. Difference within Identity: Recognition, Growth and the Circularity of Indigenous Knowledge. JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIAN STUDIES 2023. 47: 547–565.