Knowledge free and ‘unfree’: Epistemic tensions in plant knowledge at the Cape in the 17<sup>th</sup>and 18<sup>th</sup>centuries1

Augusto, Geri

doi:10.1080/18186870701751673

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Therefore, just as modern science and laboratories are suited to some modern contexts, African ways of knowing are and were suited to their own context, if only we invest more time in decolonizing and studying them. For some time, I have been interested in that often violent but also generative intersection of knowledge about plants among European colonizers, the indigenous peoples of Africa and the Americas, and black people enslaved in Europe's vast colonies, particularly on plantations in what the incoming occupiers at first deemed the "New World" (Augusto 2007(Augusto , 2009. The literature about medico-botanical, agricultural, and other natural knowledge of indigenous peoples and of enslaved Africans and their descendants is growing, and these topics are now looked at through a variety of approaches, from anthropology to archeology, from environment to medicine.…”

Section: Conclusion: Toward a Decolonized African Science Technologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Smartness from Below: Variations on Technology and Creativity in Contemporary Kinshasa

Pype¹

2017

What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean From Africa?

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of course, D. A. Masolo, whose critique was that Ngugi, Odera-Oruka, and Vansina did not go far enough and left open-after negritude, after Pan-Africanism, after African socialism, and even after the "sage philosophy" that Odera-Oruka actively promoted-the search for new archives and modes of African philosophy. I approached these scholars as a learner, and I was looking to apprentice in the African way, in which elders impart knowledge to the young at close quarters.The debt I owe to Mamadou Diouf for helping me understand the context of the question of the scientific and the technological in Africa from a combined philosophical, historical, contemporary, diagnostic, and prognostic perspective is, quite simply, unpayable. After my textual and face-to-face interactions with the above-mentioned scholars, it became quite clear that the issue at stake for the African reader of technology, the reader of technology in Africa, and better yet African technology, is not just the behavior of science, technology, and innovation but the intellectual work of making things and their strategic deployment. Can one see Africans as intellectuals thinking about and making technology based on intellect?This question was an acknowledgement of what I had witnessed in everyday interactions with people in different parts of Africa, but even more so during my own childhood in Zimbabwe. In people's mobilities I saw an archive, a statement, a critique, and an authoring of thought into reality through practice, operationalized through the movement of legs, hands, mouth, and other body functions. I wanted to locate the subject of conversation upstream of practice, to understand the intellection that drove it. Some micro-movements of and within the body were involuntary; the concern was with the voluntary actions, delegated by the mind-at-work.STS had prepared me to understand one version of science and technology, to recognize it when I saw it. This was a vital skill-but it also turned out to be quite blunt for the nature of knowledge I was looking at. Conventional (Western) STS is good at identifying banal forms of science and technology but is severely limited in non-Western contexts, in which things scientific and things technological are not readily recognizable.Here was the problem in the specific case of Africa. The project of addressing the meanings of science, technology, and innovation from Africa had to be philosophically grounded, because to my understanding the colonial ordering of knowledge had cut up African knowledge, knowledge production, and structures and modes of knowing into tiny pieces. What had once been a whole entity known as a composite was now scattered into specialist disciplines like philosophy, theology/religious studies, African languages and literature, history, economic history, anthropology, and so on. The philosophy I remember being taught in the University of Zimbabwe in the early 1990s was about Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Marx, and so on. Where were the Africans?xii Preface xiv PrefaceAll in all, t...

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Section: Conclusion: Toward a Decolonized African Science Technologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Smartness from Below: Variations on Technology and Creativity in Contemporary Kinshasa

Pype¹

2017

What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean From Africa?

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“…Botanical gardens and "dry" herbaria were extensively used in the studies of nature conducted by Europe's "armchair botanists," who, as Whitaker (1996), Schiebinger (2004), and others point out, often conducted their visual examinations indoors in the comfort of private studies. Those gardens and herbaria, having incorporated plants detached from indigenous knowledge and contexts, generated countless dissertations and learned articles back in Europe (Augusto 2007). Moreover, some of the most famous collections of traveling scientists and physicians who returned home to consolidate fortunes accrued in the colonies not only graced their own private cabinets but also became the foundations of great museum collections of natural history.…”

Section: Performative Research and Visualized Knowledge: Cabinets Gamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For some time, I have been interested in that often violent but also generative intersection of knowledge about plants among European colonizers, the indigenous peoples of Africa and the Americas, and black people enslaved in Europe's vast colonies, particularly on plantations in what the incoming occupiers at first deemed the "New World" (Augusto 2007(Augusto , 2009. The literature about medico-botanical, agricultural, and other natural knowledge of indigenous peoples and of enslaved Africans and their descendants is growing, and these topics are now looked at through a variety of approaches, from anthropology to archeology, from environment to medicine.…”

Section: -Chakanetsa Mavhungamentioning

confidence: 99%

What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa?

Mavhunga¹

2017

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Curriculum Change in the Postcolonial Art History Classroom: A Case Study

Cloete

2023

de arte

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Knowledge free and ‘unfree’: Epistemic tensions in plant knowledge at the Cape in the 17^thand 18^thcenturies1

Cited by 6 publications

References 33 publications

Smartness from Below: Variations on Technology and Creativity in Contemporary Kinshasa

Smartness from Below: Variations on Technology and Creativity in Contemporary Kinshasa

What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa?

Curriculum Change in the Postcolonial Art History Classroom: A Case Study

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Knowledge free and ‘unfree’: Epistemic tensions in plant knowledge at the Cape in the 17thand 18thcenturies1

Cited by 6 publications

References 33 publications

Smartness from Below: Variations on Technology and Creativity in Contemporary Kinshasa

Smartness from Below: Variations on Technology and Creativity in Contemporary Kinshasa

What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa?

Curriculum Change in the Postcolonial Art History Classroom: A Case Study

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Product

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Knowledge free and ‘unfree’: Epistemic tensions in plant knowledge at the Cape in the 17^thand 18^thcenturies1