This article examines the relationship between epistemic freedom, and epistemic injustice and epistemic oppression. I situate epistemic freedom within the larger project of epistemic decolonisation and argue that epistemic freedom is central to both its positive and negative programme. Through exploring the intersections of the notion of epistemic freedom and the scholarship on epistemic injustice and oppression, I argue that one can think of epistemic injustices and oppression as infringements on epistemic freedom. I identify shared themes between the theorisation of (...) epistemic freedom and the literature on epistemic injustice and epistemic oppression, including silencing, active ignorance, and epistemic exploitation. I briefly explore each of these themes, identifying both intersections and divergences. Lastly, I draw on the literature on epistemic injustice and oppression to sharpen Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s (2018. Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonization. London: Routledge) general conception of epistemic freedom and develop a tripartite structure for what substantial epistemic freedom entails. I argue that being epistemically free entails being able to choose one’s epistemic endeavours, having the means to pursue them, as well as being able to meaningfully partake in the shared endeavours of the epistemic communities that one belongs to. (shrink)

When an agent suffers in their capacity as a knower, they are a victim of epistemic injustice. Varieties of epistemic injustices have been theorised. A salient feature across these theories is that perpetrators and victims of epistemic injustice belong to different social groups. In this paper, I argue for a form of epistemic injustice that could occur between members of the same social group. This is a form of epistemic injustice where the knower is first a victim of historical and (...) continuing oppression. Secondly, they internalise and appreciate the systems that harm them as a knower. This is possible because the victim subscribes to perniciously formed epistemic systems. This form of epistemic injustice is a valuable explanatory tool for non-standard and obscure instances of epistemic injustice where the victim a) accepts and appreciates the injustice they experience and b) is even the seeming perpetrator of the injustice against themselves. (shrink)

In its attempt to deflate of the pretensions of ‘Western knowledge’, the epistemic decolonisation movement carries on the work of Socrates, who sought to persuade those who thought that they were wise but were not, that they were not. Yet in its determination to recover and elevate indigenous systems of thought, decolonisation seems opposed to this very work, which is always corrosive of inherited belief. Decolonisation both expresses and contradicts the spirit of Socratic philosophy.

As a theologian coming from Europe, a ‘postcolonial import’ into South Africa, it is my white privilege in particular that continues to queer my understanding of a social revolution on which our future, as a people, may depend. In this article, I seek to turn my personal experience of grappling with my whiteness into the source of my reflection. Drawing inspiration from fallism – a recent student movement that inscribes itself into a larger decolonial ‘struggle against the globalised system of (...) racist capitalism’ – I ponder what it could mean, in the South African context, for whiteness to fall upward (Rohr). Here, the metaphor of ‘falling upward’ as a kenosis of whiteness is considered specifically with regard to a white theologian’s (my own) attempt to open spaces that could be filled with blackness. Contribution: This auto-ethnographic essay inscribes itself into a transdisciplinary study of theology and race from both socio-cultural and religiospiritual perspectives. The author’s personal reflections, inspired by his own engagement with the fallist narratives and his ever-evolving attitude towards the blackness–whiteness binary, as experienced in the South African social and academic contexts, are shared as a means to crack open the societal and theological (notably Christian) imagination, both of which appear to suffer from a serious crisis. (shrink)