African Epistemologies for Criticality, Decoloniality and Interculturality

This book addresses the underrepresentation and, more importantly, the misrepresentation of African epistemologies and traditions of thought in theorizing, making sense of, and doing interculturality.

Africa remains (probably) the most oppressed and silenced sphere throughout centuries of colonialism and contemporary coloniality. Therefore, such an anthology provides a platform for those insights that have substantial epistemic capacity to alter our taken-for-granted notions of what interculturality is and what it is about. While a number of works have charted the contributions of African epistemologies in advancing our understanding of our intercultural realities, this book argues that the processes of decoloniality through and within interculturality have never been about (under) (mis)representation per se, but about how the politics of representation can provide inaccurate, tokenistic and false inclusion. This book aims to substantiate the notion that decoloniality and interculturality are mutually inclusive, to demonstrate the affordances of African epistemologies in advancing intercultural knowledge, and to support the need to make visible philosophical and power-literate approaches to interculturality.

The book will be essential reading for scholars and students interested in African philosophy, African epistemology, and, more broadly, interculturality and intercultural communication.

Hamza R’boul is a research assistant professor in the Department of International Education at the Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. His research interests include intercultural education, (higher) education in the Global South, decolonial endeavours in education, cultural politics of language teaching and postcoloniality. His books include Intercultural Communication Education and Research: Reenvisioning Fundamental Notions (Routledge, 2023, with Dervin), and Postcolonial Challenges to Theory and Practice in ELT and TESOL: Geopolitics of Knowledge and Epistemologies of the South (Routledge, 2023).