Oyeronke Oyewumi

(Stony Brook University)

Decolonizing Knowledge: Re-Centering Africa and African Epistemologies in the Quest for Global Transformation

Currently, the call to decolonize universities, disciplines, social movements and even
knowledge itself, resonates globally. Nowhere is the quest for social transformation
more resonant than in Africa, and amongst peoples of African descent, given their
centuries-old place in the unequal/unjust global system. Since its inauguration,
Eurocentric epistemologies were foundational to the subjugation of conquered peoples
and their continuing domination.Thus the recovery of endogenous intellectual traditions
is necessary as Africans seek to reclaim their sovereignty. The lecture will draw from my
own decades-long research on African systems of knowledge, gender, race,
decoloniality, and self-recovery.

You can find the video recording of this event here. 

In cooperation with the International Research Center "Interweaving Performance Cultures", the Margherita-von-Brentano-Zentrum and the International Week of the Freie Universität Berlin.