Epistemic Decolonization

Colonial rule has shaped, created, and in many cases eroded the different systems through which people come to know things. In recent years, researchers and campaigners have begun asking whether knowledge itself can be freed from that legacy. D.A. Wood approaches these efforts through a critical, philosophical lens, surveying the many routes people have taken and illustrating them with concrete cases so that newcomers to the field can find their bearings.

Wood's central claim is that the dominant contemporary strategy for this kind of decolonization runs into stubborn theoretical and practical dead ends. To point toward another path, the book examines the political writing and scientific work of Frantz Fanon and Amílcar Cabral, showing how the philosophical commitments they held can help readers move beyond the difficulties that define today's mainstream approach.

The final section connects Fanon and Cabral with several contemporary feminist epistemologists, linking anticolonial thought to current debates in feminist philosophy of knowledge.