Decolonizing African Knowledge: Autoethnography and African Epistemologies

Toyin Falola

Hul 2022 · Cambridge University Press

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Addressing the consequences of European slavery, colonialism, and neo-colonialism on African history, knowledge and its institutions, this innovative book applies autoethnography to the understanding of African knowledge systems. Considering the 'Self' and Yoruba Being (the individual and the collective) in the context of the African decolonial project, Falola strips away Eurocentric influences and interruptions from African epistemology. Avoiding colonial archival sources, it grounds itself in alternative archives created by memory, spoken words, images and photographs to look at the themes of politics, culture, nation, ethnicity, satire, poetics, magic, myth, metaphor, sculpture, textiles, hair and gender. Vividly illustrated in colour, it uses diverse and novel methods to access an African way of knowing. Exploring the different ways that a society understands and presents itself, this book highlights convergence, enmeshing private and public data to provide a comprehensive understanding of society, public consciousness, and cultural identity.

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Toyin Falola is Professor of History, University Distinguished Teaching Professor, and the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, at the University of Texas at Austin. He had served as the General Secretary of the Historical Society of Nigeria, the President of the African Studies Association, Vice-President of UNESCO Slave Route Project, and the Kluge Chair of the Countries of the South, Library of Congress. He is a member of the Scholars' Council, Kluge Center, the Library of Congress. He has received over thirty lifetime career awards and fifteen honorary doctorates. He has written extensively on African knowledge systems, including Religious Beliefs and Knowledge Systems in Africa (2021), African Spirituality, Politics and Knowledge Systems: Sacred Words and Holy Realm (2021) and Decolonizing African Studies: Knowledge Production, Agency and Voice (2022). He is also the series co-editor for Cambridge University Press's series African Identities.