Epistemic ‘Othering’ and the Decolonisation of Knowledge

Abstract

In this article I make the case that epistemic othering constitutes epistemic injustice, which is inscribed in the disciplinary formations of knowledge. As they help us produce our world, these formations, nowadays, preside over a considerable part of university practices and their conditions of privilege and disadvantage. The epistemic injustice within disciplines, so I argue, renders the collective interpretive resources required for epistemic justice structurally
prejudiced. Using Fricker’s notions of epistemic injustice and Foucault’s distinction between savoir and connaissance, I suggest a new definitional framework for the decolonisation of knowledge with concomitant possibilities for innovative knowledge practices that view epistemic justice as central to the disruption of the disciplines.