Reframing African ontologies in the era of decolonisation

Abstract

In this chapter, we reframe African ontologies as a form of “problematising” the sub-field of political communication, and as a form of “consciousness raising”, about the need to decolonise its inter-disciplinary theory-praxis. We begin the process of dialogue and self-reflexivity by interrogating the theory-practice of political communication, thereby creating new knowledge production about political communication in Africa. This “decolonisation” of political communication and the resultant knowledge creation need to consider the epistemic insights of authors from Africa, in the field of political communication. In other words, African authors and scholars thinking with, and from, ‘subalternalized racial/ethnic/sexual spaces and bodies’. Or, put another way, it should be an example of what Archie Mafeje has called “endogeneity” – that is, African representation/scholarship that affirms African socio-economic context, positionalities, experience/s, African subjectivities and insights, and knowledge from Africa; and, in doing so, centres Africa, removing it from the margins. This chapter focuses on how to create knowledge production, which is also what Grosfoguel refers to as “epistemic disobedience”. As such, instead of supporting the current status quo in political communication, it serves to challenge, disrupt, destabilise, and interrogate this status quo, which, without doubt, is racialised, hierarchical, classist, capitalist, heteropatriarchal, gentrified, imperialist, and westernised.