Reality is Colonial: Epistemic Violence, Existential Epistemology, and the Big Lie

What does it mean to name the world? 

Knowledge does not emerge in a vacuum, it is extremely political, not just the content of knowledge, but also who decides what even counts as knowledge in the first place? So you can ask, why is some knowledge considered universal (often western knowledge), but our knowledge is often considered local, traditional, indigenous (Ojaide, 2015) like medicinal practices, religious systems, and so on. There’s actually a term for this: epistemological apartheid (Rabaka, 2010), which is the devaluation, of ways of knowing from those of racially minoritised backgrounds. So, who decided those labels, and what implications do they have? 

In her essay Can the Subaltern Speak? Gayatri Spivak (1988) called this epistemic violence, denying marginalized groups the ability to contribute to knowledge. Spivak posed the question, Can the Subaltern Speak? and the answer leans more towards no. Or that even if the Subaltern does speak, our voices are often appropriated and marginalized. Frantz Fanon said colonization did not just dispossess us of land and material things, but it also took away the colonized’s ability to name the world. Naming the world from a literal language perspective, but also naming the world means defining reality, because if you name something you decide what it is and whether it is important.

In her essay A is for Africa (2022), Sylvia Tamale says the world is living one Big Lie that there is only one universal correct way of being human, which mandates conformity to western ways of thinking, being, and doing, for example in the concept of time, development, education, and so on. This is because we live in an epistemically colonial world. She writes, “Western imperialism present their worldview of reality as the only sensible one, as “common sense” in order to manipulate and exploit “the Other.” And because colonial logics dominate not through physical coercion, but through the widespread acceptance of their ideologies and practices, they are hardly ever questioned”.

This means then that if you grow up learning about the world and ‘reality’ through someone else’s epistemology, we also learn about ourselves and learn to see ourselves through someone else’s gaze. Ipadeola (2023) calls it existential epistemology which denies agency to the oppressed in formulating their own epistemologies, and forces them to see the world through the lens provided by their oppressors. A good example of this is language, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Fanon said language was one of the most violent tools for epistemic colonialism. Ngugi called this the cultural bomb, and Fanon said colonialism took away the colonized’s ability to name the world.

So, what can one do with this information? One can choose to be disobedient, epistemically disobedient (Mignolo). It means to think outside the colonial frame, for me, it just means to be inquisitive, to ask, why is something the way it is, and who does that benefit? You can apply that to so many areas of your life, the language you speak, the clothes you wera, the food you eat, the books you read, and so on.

So, yeah, I think it just starts with an awareness and a questioning of why is something the way it is, and who does that benefit? And thats what I use this platform for.

Asante!

Mumbi, April 2026.

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