Foundations of Black Epistemology: Knowledge Discourse in Africana Philosophy

Foundations of Black Epistemology is Adebayo Oluwayomi’s bold endeavor to delineate Black epistemology as a new sub-disciplinary focus in contemporary Africana or Black philosophy. He engages in a rigorous historical study of Black intellectual history to show how seminal Black thinkers have long been interested in and engaged with questions concerning the phenomenon of human knowledge, and questions around human agency, including practical considerations regarding the social and political value of knowledge.

Foundations of Black Epistemology examines writings by Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglas, Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. DuBois, Frantz Fanon, Steve Bantu Biko, Huey P. Newtown, and Kathleen Neal Clever. Each chapter addresses issues of self-knowledge, self-assertion, Black consciousness, or anticolonialism and its relation to personal and political epistemologies.

Oluwayomi offers innovative perspectives on the formulation, deduction, and interrogation of epistemological themes within Black Africana philosophy. By considering the important epistemological theories and arguments in Black philosophy particularly in the last 150 to 200 years, Foundations of Black Epistemology promises to generate new discussions around this necessary field of Black Africana philosophy.

Adebayo Oluwayomi is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at West Chester University.