Imperfect Cognitions

This post is by Veli Mitova (University of Johannesburg), who guest-edited a special issue of Philosophical Papers on  Epistemic Decolonisation  and here introduces the topic to us and presents the seven essays contributing to the special issue.  Veli Mitova   We live in an epistemically colonial world; that’s no secret. Although the Global North physically left as colonial ‘master’ long ago, it still gets to tell the Global South what counts as genuine knowledge and real science. The call to epistemic decolonisation – which is gaining increasing traction in both academia and everyday life – is the dual call to dismantle the North’s self-arrogated epistemic superiority, and to re-centre the South’s knowledge enterprise onto our geo-historical here and now.  Decolonising Knowledge Here and Now Veli Mitova , the guest editor of the special issue and the author of this post, models epistemic decolonisation on Kwasi Wiredu’s conceptual decolonisation: it involves t...