Abstract
This chapter serves as a mechanism of recognising and acknowledging the illegitimacy of historic and traditional western approaches to narratives of African feminist epistemology. These approaches have engendered lenses of perspective which are irrefutably skewed by colonialism and whose address is warranted in ensuring both a means of learning about the end of an era and the prospect of a more authentically framed future framed, shaped, and determined from within African culture and context by those. To undertake this acknowledgement and recognition is one of the first and much belated to framing steps in ensuring that the articulation of truth lies best with those whose lived truths they are, rather than any tokenistic perceptions of them, consequently articulated through Western lenses of perspective.
TopIntroduction
‘In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.’
(Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900)
Hermeneutical injustice via interpretive harm has been recognised as a longstanding impact of colonialism and has been directly attributed to structural oppression (Berenstain, 2016). Traditionalist approaches to Social Constructivist methodologies have become a mechanism by which this oppression can be actively perpetuated (Falola, 2022). This results in contention within the context of African feminist epistemology since this too relies on an interpretivist lens within which, acknowledgement of the epistemic position of the researcher is made (Adebayo & Njoku, 2023). The outcome is that this acknowledgement of positionality still uses a one dimensional concept to make meaning of a three dimensional intersectional lived experience. The impact of this has been that both African men and women’s capacity for knowing in the field of African feminist epistemology has only actually been visible through the lens of white feminist methodology (Mellor, 2022).
The integration of the epistemologies and conceptual bases of domination have the effect of being hidden within traditional white feminist research, which predominantly serve to place the source of challenges and issues within black female populations with little or no regard for the structural inequalities of oppression which actively pervade African lives (Wielanga, 2022). The impact of this is to further entrench perceptions of the West within conceptual foundations now tarnished by ideologies that neither serve to represent or interpret the concept of hermeneutical justice (Akoleowo, 2022). In the context of the paradigmatic sufficiency of social research, epistemology remains an integral component in the relationship between ontology, philosophy, methodology and methods (Jackson et al, 2022). This chapter will provide an overview of how African feminist epistemology in the context of knowledge and knowledge acquisition has largely become the preserve of white feminists whose portrayal of cause and effect within an interpretive lens continue to impact on the capacity of African feminists to identify, acknowledge and address the structural inequalities which constrain efforts to engender authentic change. An insight will be gained into the relative differences that can exist between different types of knowledge and how this then influences how knowledge is established, articulated and regarded in the wider context of research. For the purposes of this chapter epistemology, is operationally defined as the nature and form of knowledge in relation to how this relationship is articulated in feminist praxis. Underpinning this definition is the assumption that the basis of all human knowledge is subjective and is rooted in the socially constructed meaning-making that underpins human curiosity, inquiry and subsequently assumption (Hester, 2020). The issue of contention is not this assumption but rather the assumption that an interpretive lens as applied to African feminist epistemology can refract a vision which is not in any way authentic and remains void of the truth of experience lived within structural oppression (Ossome, 2023). As a white western author myself, I seek not to challenge this but rather acknowledge it so that it can be accounted for and acknowledged by my Western and Eurocentric counterparts who seek to wholly interpret and represent the voices of those who live lives still dominated by the structural oppression imposed upon them (Hurlbut, 2021). The context of social science presents an ideal arena from a disciplinary perspective to consider the relationship between what it is possible to know and the knower. What this relationship actually constitutes is a prevailing dilemma in the study of epistemology that has been continually extended to incorporate the concept of the personal in epistemic cognition. What that dilemma actually constitutes, is the fundamental difference between truth and verisimilitude and the contention of whether a re-examination of the constructive alignment of methodological approaches to Western social research methodologies in relation to what they make possible to interpret are required (Bernecka, 2022).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Epistemic Responsibility: Epistemic responsibility is the that despite not having been able, as researchers to directly experience or reason with a specific positional stance that it is still worthy of belief and accurate articulation.
Authenticity: The quality or condition of being authentic, trustworthy, or genuine.
Intersectionality: Pertains to the interconnected nature of identifiable classifications such as gender, class, and race as applied to collective or individual groups, which contribute to a distinct overlap in terms of the emergence of discrimination and active disadvantage.
Verisimilitude: Is the appearance of truth or reality rather than actual truth or reality.
Colonialism: The operational policy or practice of the acquisition of full or partial political control over other countries, occupying them with people who seek to exploit it both economically and socially.
Perspective Transformation: A key seminal theory of Jack Mezirow (1978) AU32: The in-text citation "Jack Mezirow (1978)" is not in the reference list. Please correct the citation, add the reference to the list, or delete the citation. , Perspective Transformation pertains to a structural change in terms of self-perception. The process reformulates the process of critical reflexivity, resulting in new and much developed attitudes and behaviour.
Doxastic Injustice: Doxastic injustice serves to underpin the assumption that what is used to represent others can essentially be damaging to them in terms of what others believe as a consequence.
Epistemic Injustice: Epistemic injustice is pertains to knowledge which is used to misrepresent, exclude or silence authentic meaning. Often this can emanate from inequity in terms of power relations which has the potential to diminish value of the perceptions and opinions of underrepresented or marginalised individuals or communities.
Hermeneutical Ignorance: Hermeneutical ignorance stems from dominantly positioned or situated creators of knowledge who refuse to acknowledge their own sense of epistemic bias in relation to those who are directly experienced in terms of credibility and dependability.