On Knowing and Not Knowing “Life” in Molecular Biology and Xhosa Healing: Ontologies in the Preclinical Trial of a South African Indigenous Medicine (Muthi)

Abstract

Seemingly distant practices of molecular biology and indigenous Xhosa healing have commonalities that I would like to bring into conversation in this article. The preclinical trial of an indigenous medicine brings them together in a research consortium. In this instance, both sets of experts are meant to collaborate in preparing a wild bush for it to pass the tests of the randomized clinical trial (RCT) and to potentially become a biopharmaceutical to counter the tuberculosis pandemic. I aim to tease out how the two sets of actors and their respective practices converge and diverge in their healing hopes and ways of managing uncertainty. Ultimately, I am interested in understanding how the preferred process of making medicine “work” by each set of actors relies upon particular ways of knowing and not knowing life, bringing some ontologies into being, letting others wither away. The shared ways of knowing life as a movement of opening at the edges of the RCT are proposed as paths of recognition between one and the other practice.

Investigating journal peer review as scientific object of study: unabridged version – Part II

“…Editorial reader judgements appear to have nonetheless maintained quasiabsolute power owing in great part to structural secrecy and to the apparent naturalness of having one dominant ensemble of knowledge practices. This harks back to the shift of authority from religious Divine Right to Nature (as investigated by science) that suppressed other ways of knowing (Zavarzadeh and Morton, 1991:68) discussed in Gaudet (2014a) (see example of heterogeneous ways of knowing in Laplante, 2014). A closer analysis of the dynamics of absolute knowledge and related structural secrecy and anonymity can lead to better understanding for the underlying power and trust dynamics.…”

All that glitters is not gold: The shaping of contemporary journal peer review at scientific and medical journals

“…Embedded in anonymous relations is an assumption that who holds the role of referee does not matter. Such absolute knowledge harks back to a shift of authority from religious Divine Right to scientific understanding of Nature that suppressed other ways of knowing (Zavarzadeh and Morton, 1991:68; see heterogeneous ways of knowing in Laplante, 2014). Absolute confidence in anonymous judgements that is asked of scientists and a wider audience appears to mimic those of 'faith' as a specific type of confidence where "[t]his condition of faith, in a perfectly pure form, detached from every sort of empirical consideration, probably occurs only within the sphere of religion" (Simmel, 1906:450).…”

Western versus African Medical Knowledge Systems

“…These forms of "scientific" research use African medicine as the base for preclinical trials by subjecting it to experimentations in randomised clinical trials with the sole aim of isolating the active properties of the plants of African medicine while deriding other aspects of the healing process as demonic and nonsensical (Gibson, 2011). This dominant narrative, notwithstanding, some scholars have also begun to challenge this position (Laplante, 2014;Ngubane, 1977;Mazrui, 1986;Van Sartima, 1984). Contemporary efforts by various African governments, motivated by the World Health Organization (1978,1984,1995), to officially recognize African medicine can best be understood against the backdrop of promoting African indigenous knowledge and medicine but still framed along the ethical codes of Western medicine that is characterised by "scientific proof", standardization, and tight regulations (Appiah, 2012).…”