Abstract
The project of decolonisation has been confronted with at least two significant questions on which the success of the movement depends: why should we decolonise; and how should we go about it? While the answer to the first question is clearly informed by the long and brutal history of colonialism, there has not been a clear consensus about the second question in either the various factions of decolonisation or the scholarship on decolonisation. My aim in this dissertation is to attempt to fill this theoretical gap.
Although some scholars have been more radical in their approach to decolonisation, likening it to a complete disassociation from Western knowledge, I appeal to a more moderate approach that is informed by Kwasi Wiredu’s (1998; 2002) “conceptual decolonisation”. This involves a two-part programmea negative one, which requires “eliminating modes of conceptualization” that were brought through colonisation; and, a positive programme, involving the exploitation of resources of our own indigenous conceptual schemes (Wiredu, 2002). In essence, addressing the question of how we should decolonise is about constructing a method that removes undue colonial influence as well as extracting and advancing suitable indigenous knowledges.
The process of decolonisation, by virtue of being a process of incorporating the past into the present, is bound to ensue in conflict about what, from our indigenous knowledges, to utilise and how we should go about it. In an attempt to resolve this conflict, and more broadly, to address the question of how we should decolonise, I propose what I call a pragmatist African feminist standpoint theory. I argue that this theory will not only provide us with guidelines for resolving the conflict that may arise in the process of decolonisation, but also with an overall theoretically fruitful set of criteria for how we ought to decolonise. The criteria involve, among other things, a) the need to utilise practically useful conceptual schemes that are relevant to African people living in a post-colonial world, and b) taking into account the situatedness of the marginalised persons in the utilisation of those schemes.
My approach is pragmatic in the sense that it ultimately seeks to provide guidelines that are practically applicable for the sake of improving the lives of African people, while at the same time, confronting various systems of oppression that are imbedded in African societies. It is feminist and standpoint theoretical due to its commitment to starting any epistemic enquiry from the standpoint of the marginalised. I argue that a pragmatic feminist standpoint theory is a more suitable method of decolonisation since it is sensitive to the various complexities of African people that are the result of both colonialism and the African indigenous knowledge systems themselves. Africans are not only oppressed by colonialism but, in some instances, by African indigenous systems too. Therefore, while the goal of decolonisation is to rid Africans of colonial influence, the ultimate goal should be to rid Africans of all forms of oppression.