Searching for Theoretical Agency: Towards a Black African Immigrant Standpoint Epistemology

Abstract

This article describes the theoretical construction of a Black African Immigrant Standpoint Epistemology (BAISE). BAISE is an emerging system of thought that seeks and locates the souls of Black African immigrants, re-centers their conceptions of knowledge, and describes their theory of action. Such an epistemology is critical as a tool for Black African immigrants to more effectively express their theoretical agency and construct an alternative form of knowledge that accounts for the totality of their experiences and their social realities. The article first describes the key tenets of several conceptual frameworks that have been appropriated and reconfigured to provide the conceptual foundations of BAISE. These core components are interwoven together to capture the complexity of the experiences and the realities of Black African immigrants and create a tapestry of concepts and knowledges providing the epistemological context for BAISE. Among the many coeval and complementary theories of knowledge available, theories that focus on agency and the construction of realities, on the valorization of previously discredited and discounted epistemological alternatives, as well as on the deconstruction of the positionality of Black African immigrants on the racialized checkerboard and on the re-centering of the marginalized and oppressed lives have seeded the emergence of BAISE. The second major section of this article presents the initial theoretical development of BAISE. The conceptualization process describes how the marginalized status of Black African immigrants shapes their identities and perspectives on the world.