Some Epistemological Issues in the Othering of Persons with Albinism in Africa

Abstract

Persons with albinism (PWAs) are considered an other, a different or queer entity in many African societies. They are not only considered as physically different but also as ontologically different in black African communities. The frictions in the relations of the black folks with PWAs in African communities largely ensue from the ideas and knowledge claims about the nature of their being. I begin this chapter by exploring the African theory of knowledge and the resulting elitist virtue epistemology. Elitist virtue epistemology, as I will show, consists mainly of the claim that to know is to partake of the epistemic competence of an elite class in a particular social system, for the elite class is seen as the source of epistemic value and members of the class are thought to possess intellectual and moral competence to sustain accurate knowledge. I then examine the nature of the epistemology of ignorance and its role in African epistemology of albinism. By epistemology of ignorance, I mean here knowledge, which, though not factual, is actively and deliberately produced and sustained for domination and exploitation, carefully crafted to serve an authoritarian structure, skillfully assimilated into culture and passed down from generation to generation. I proceed further to examine the extent to which an African elitist virtue epistemology and the epistemology of ignorance could constitute bad epistemic practice for the knowledge of the albinotic other in African societies. I conclude by showing that a deliberate attempt to understand the nature of the (albinotic) other rather than the mere assimilation and reliance on social representations of the other would provide basis for a positive relationship with the other .

An earlier and abridged draft of this chapter was presented at the 4th Annual International Conference of the Centre for Phenomenology in South Africa with the theme, Justice and the Other, organized by the Department of Philosophy, University of Fort Hare, South Africa, from the 24 to 26 March 2017, at the Crawfords Beach Lodge, Chintsa, South Africa.