Unthinking Epistemicide

Author: Lucas Van Milders Series: Global Epistemics

This book argues that the cause of social and political inequalities is above all the dominance of non-Western worldviews. Developing a critical theory and praxis for undoing epistemicide, this book develops the claim that worldviews are necessarily plural as each way of looking at the world reflects a particular perspective on the world.

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How can the supremacy of the Western worldview be undone? This book argues that the cause of social and political inequalities is above all the inequality of non-Western worldviews when compared to that of the West. Developing a critical theory and praxis for undoing epistemicide, or in other words, the murder of knowledge this book challenges the approach of ‘the West and the rest.’ Epistemicide refers specifically to the destruction of non-Western forms of knowledge production that has facilitated the hegemony of Western-centric epistemology, or one that takes the West as a universalized perspective.

Rather than rehashing well-known critiques of Western-centrism, this book develops the claim that, alternative to the West vs. Rest hierarchy, worldviews are necessarily plural as each way of looking at the world reflects a particular perspective on the world. Bringing this plurality of perspectives into a dialogue that celebrates difference and equality, this book presents both a theoretical understanding of the world as hosting multiple worldviews and a practical conception of these worldviews as always already enacted within the world. Undoing the dominance of the Western-centric worldview entails looking at the different ways of being in the world that exist today and that reflect the prospect of a world in which many worlds are possible.

Critic Reviews

In this elegantly argued and courageous book, Lucas Van Milders shows us how to unravel the hegemony of the modern European critical tradition from within to create the possibility of dialogue with alternative and equally powerful global knowledges. His revitalised version of hermeneutics with a radical politics of autonomy becomes the basis for a global conversation about how we know what we know. This is a book for our time!--Iain MacKenzie, head of School of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent