Towards A Plausible Account of Epistemic Decolonisation

Abstract

Abstract Why should we decolonise knowledge? One popular rationale is that colonialism has set up a single perspective as epistemically authoritative over many equally legitimate ones, and this is a form of epistemic injustice. Hence, we should take different epistemic perspectives as having equal epistemic authority. A problem with this rationale is that its relativist implications undermine the call for decolonisation, which is premised on the objectivity of the moral claim that ‘epistemic colonisation is wrong’. In this paper, I aim to provide a rationale for epistemic decolonisation that avoids the shortfalls of this relativist rationale. I develop a distinctly epistemic rationale for epistemic decolonisation that positions the imperative to decolonise knowledge as an epistemic virtue.