Epistemically Disobedient
I tell stories about time, colonial time, African time, the time you think you’re running out of. I call it temporal disobedience. Some call it poetry.
I’m Mumbi Macharia, otherwise known as Mumbi Poetry, a writer, performer, and researcher passionate about language, time, culture, and decolonial imagination. Kenyan (currently producing time in Copenhagen, Denmark), I use storytelling, spoken word poetry, and academic inquiry to explore African identities, histories, and futures. This blog is a home for my reflections, creative work, and the questions that keep me up at night.
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- Disobediently African: naming the world & other stories part 1Who gets to name the world? In the first post of her series “Disobediently African: naming the world,” Mumbi explores self definition while citing Fanon, Ngũgĩ, Spivak, and Mudimbe, asking what it means to think outside the colonial library
- The Colonial Myth of Development: The Circle Not the LineFor too long, the story of Africa has been told in a straight line, from “underdeveloped” to “developed. But what if this line doesn’t exist in the first place? Thinkers like Julius Nyerere, John Mbiti, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o remind us that African thought moves in circles, in rhythm with people, land, and memory. To decolonize development, then, is to reclaim not just our future, but our time.
- Swahili time and temporal disobedienceWestern clocks begin at midnight, but Swahili time starts at sunrise. In Kiswahili, time isn’t something abstract, it begins when life begins. This way of telling time doesn’t just measure hours; it measures relationship between people, the sun, and the rhythm of life itself. This is a quiet rebellion, a form of temporal disobedience that reminds us time isn’t neutral, it’s cultural, political, and deeply human.
- Temporal Disobedience: Decolonizing the Future Through African TimeWhat if time isn’t something we measure, but something we live? For many African societies, time doesn’t rush forward into an infinite future, it circles, returns, remembers. In this essay, I trace what it means to disobey the clock, to think through Mbiti, Tamale, and others who remind us that maybe time, too, can be decolonized.
- The Case Against Rap Lyrics as Evidence in Court
The intersectionality between American HipHop and Gang Culture runs deep, but freedom of speech and expression cannot be understated. It’s art.
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ABOUT ME
“She is definitely indefatigable, and her creativity and oratory, a definition of the word.” – Afrowayent.com
I was born to write and perform poetry. I am a writer, performer, curator, content editor, copywriter, law school graduate, MA in African Studies graduate, and Sondeka Award’s Best spoken word poet of the year, Kenya 2020 & 2021.
Mumbi Macharia 