Mbifanse Milton-Keyness Vuchi
Introduction
Tremendous amounts of literature have been produced on the concept of colonial epistemology. The relationships between the conceptual, epistemological, and methodological premises of Western modes of knowledge-production and European projects of colonial expansion have been the subject of powerful and sophisticated postcolonial and decolonial critiques over the past forty years by scholars in the humanities and social sciences (Savransky, 1, 2017). In order to ground the effects of colonial epistemology on discourse within institutions of knowledge in postcolonial Cameroon, it is imperative that we draw a line of reference from which we can clearly see the distinction between epistemology and ontology, knowledge and reality. In so doing, we look critically at the British system of Indirect rule (Taiwo, 895, 1993), and how through this system a structure was created within Cameroon that fostered ‘sanctioned ignorance’ (Bradley, 25, 2003) through exclusionary citizenship.
Throughout this paper, I use the phrase ‘knowledge institution’, ‘institutions of knowledge’, or ‘institutions of learning’ interchangeably to refer to the same entity. Note that I do no use the phrase ‘academic institution’ as a synonymic representation of the entity I define as a ‘knowledge institution’. Note also, that I use the word ‘universities’ or ‘academic institutions’ to denote the current entity that represents an institution in postcolonial Cameroon simply reproducing colonial knowledge systems.
Epistemology; who produces knowledge, when does it happen, and why (Mignolo, 2, 2009) is essential to understanding forms of philosophy during and after colonial eras. Epistemology is the basis for major and momentous changes or shifts that takes place within a certain historical period or setting, referred to as an epochal transformation. It entails fresh discoveries that radically transform accepted conventions, systems, or paradigms. In this context, therefore, I define institutions of knowledge in postcolonial anglophone Cameroon as any entity that engages in the systemic production of knowledge that reinvents, reimagines, and reclaims the personhood of the postcolonial anglophone Cameroonian such that this body of knowledge radically breaks from the colonial rhetoric.
As Grosfoguel (204, 2002), argues, it may seem trivial and outdated to discuss the subject of epistemic decoloniality in a ‘post-independence’ world. But a world-systems approach from the standpoint of the colonial difference presents a special chance to reconsider the contemporary world and challenge the notion of thinking it is currently decolonized. This world systems approach is defined as the destructive impact of colonialism in all of its manifestations and at all scales (international, national, and local), together with its Eurocentric knowledge that can be seen in antisystemic movements and utopian ideologies worldwide (Grosfoguel, 207, 2002) This is supported by Bassil (27, 2005), who argues that colonization changed Cameroon's ideologies. It is imperative to acknowledge that the economic, political, and philosophical processes functioned simultaneously, resulting in an ongoing process of mutual symbiosis of these elements. It is also crucial to investigate how anglophone Cameroon has changed on multiple levels, considering not only the political shifts and economic reorientations but also the significant and unsettling impact of how European expansionism and the establishment of a global capitalist system starting in the 16th century have reconceptualized Cameroon and Cameroonians. Mignolo (808, 1995), however, traces the roots of this colonialist epistemic project to the European Renaissance, terming it the period of “the discontinuity of classical tradition”. As he describes, the only texts that caught the eye of European scholars interested in the philosophy of the colonial periphery were those that fell within the natural domains of the expertise of these scholars. Therefore, because of this restricted legacy of the Renaissance, knowledge of the periphery was purposefully ignored and, in its place, Europe produced its own literature on the colonized.
In this research, I define “teacher” as a person who embodies any form of knowledge that is applicable in the decolonisation project in institutions of learning. Besides this definition, there is no further categorization that can be used. An “intellectual” on the other hand, is a scholar of contemporary literature. I make this distinction to show that a teacher does not have to be a part of the Manichean binary that this research examines. A difficulty that this research acknowledges but does not examine is related to the inherent contradictions necessary for impulse and activity. I take a different approach, however, to express the idea that the struggle against oppression as the means to the end which is liberation is not a binary. It is a spectrum in constant reinvention. The teacher is central to this reinventive process by providing knowledge that reflects contemporary realities without retraditionalizing society.
This paper focuses on the question of the Black ‘subject’ of post-colonial anglophone Cameroon. British colonial epistemology in this post colony can be looked at through the lens of colonial subjection. Accordingly, Fanon, the overarching figure of the ‘Black subject’ writes that “there has never been a radical break from its clutches” and as such, there has been no change that reflect contemporary conditions (Sithole, 32, 2016). Discourses surrounding Africa in general and post-colonial Cameroon in particular are hardly made without certain cynical prejudices. Achille Mbembe, on the subject of the post-colony, writes that when Africa is perceived as comprising what constitutes ‘human nature’ it is only done under negative interpretation (Mbembe, 12, 2001). This negative interpretation can be defined as the Western view that postcolonial Cameroonian’s attributes pertaining to human nature generally are of lesser value, poor quality, and little importance.
This paper is not without its shortcomings. This paper does not discuss the long-term socioeconomic effects of colonial epistemologies and the impact of colonial legacies on contemporary forms of knowledge production in academic institutions of anglophone Cameroon. The paper does not yet discuss national culture and nationalism. Time is needed to produce thoroughly curated research on national culture within a decolonisation project.
Writing on the topic at this time would produce incomplete knowledge on the question of national culture. It also does not seek to merely answer the question of the impact of colonialism on epistemic practices in contemporary academic institutions of anglophone Cameroon, neither is it a criticism of colonialism. I critically assess the consequences of the events of colonialism to the extent that they occurred and provide a challenge for the postcolonial anglophone Cameroonian: to break from colonial rhetoric without resenting European colonialism.
The recommendations put forward toward the end of this research is limited to the extent that they address the social-scientific literature available on postcolonial studies, especially literature accorded to postcolonial anglophone Cameroon. They are limited also in the presentation of suggested methods of epistemic decolonisation through philosophical and psychoanalytic processes. At my current level of academy, I am not equipped to discuss postcolonial psychoanalysis beyond a presentation of the possibility of its application. Taking care not to reproduce colonial rhetoric, I limit my suggestions to the practicable applicability of psychoanalysis to Black postcolonial experts on the subject such as Frantz Fanon, W.E.B. Du Bois, Aimee Cesaire, Achille Mbembe, and other Cameroonian authors. This is a necessary step toward epistemic decolonisation since discussing non-black postcolonial authors raises the risk of recreating a form of decolonial dependency. It is not an attempt to exclude the body of literature produced by non-black postcolonial authors.
A Brief History of British Cameroons
British Southern Cameroons or simply British Cameroons, was an administrative unit of the British colonial empire of West Africa. It was established as a Trusteeship of the British Empire and the French Republic as part of the provisions of the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations. Previously, this same territory had been on the colonial administration of the German Second Reich since 1884. After the Second World War, the territory was again mandated to the British and French made possible through treaties established by the UN Charter (Anyangwe, 1, 2009). Due to the small size of British Southern Cameroons (which did not span an area over 100 miles), the territory was administered as part of the Administrative Council of Nigeria. Several reports and documents obtained from the archives of Great Britain’s Colonial Office spanning the years since 1916 through 30 September, 1961, are used to analysis the epistemic consequences of British colonialism of the Cameroons.
Article 22 (1) of the covenant of the League of Nations states that “To those colonies and territories which as a consequence of the last war have ceased to be under the sovereignty of the States which formerly governed them and which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world, there should be applied the principle that the well-being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilization and that securities for the performance of this trust should be embodied in this Covenant” (League of Nations, 1938). Accordingly, the Mandate Agreement for British Cameroons was determined by Article 119 of the Treaty of Versailles, and, under the Council of the League of Nations, Southern Cameroons became a legal entity of the British Empire due to the European idea that the region was incapable of standing by itself because of the “pressures of the modern world”. This paper analyzes British Colonial Reports presented to the British Parliament and the United Nations on the subject of its administration of Southern Cameroons as a district of British colonial Nigeria as well as a standalone administrative unit. The source of these archives and reports is the Great Britain Colonial Office.
Administration and Constitution from 1916 – 1961
According the report presented to the British Monarch of 1949, George VI, and the British Parliament the same year, the administrative territory of British Southern Cameroons spanned an area no wider than 100 miles and some 700 miles long along the eastern frontier of Nigeria (Colonial Office Report, 22, 1949). Accordingly, the Trusteeship Council Visiting Mission to West Africa, upon inspection of the territory, made the following observations and conclusions, quoted verbatim, to the British Parliament:
1. The Mission was able to see firsthand how, among the wide diversity of peoples and terrain, and in the face of the manifold problems arising from this diversity, the peoples and Administration were pursuing of course of steady progress: in the political field the occasion of the constitutional review and the reforms in local government have revealed a rapidly awakening consciousness which has found expression in a balanced and progressive outlook, while economically the Territory has enjoyed a stable and prosperous year.
2. Nevertheless, the Administering Authority recognises that, within the framework of these administrative arrangements, the trusteeship status and special problems of the Territory require particular consideration.
3. In local government, various re-organisations have taken place in the Trust Territory during the year. These have been mainly designed to create larger units through the amalgamation of Native Authorities with a view to forming stronger and more viable organs of local government.
Excerpt from the Report on the Administration of Cameroon under British Trusteeship presented to the United Nations in 1949. (His Majesty’s Stationary Office, iv, 1949).
British colonial mandate in West Africa took a more indirect approach to administration because of the perceptions in Great Britain that as a UN mandated territory, they would soon construct the entity to become capable of self-determination. As is shown below, indirect rule meant that the system of governance that would replace the British Mandate was not a product of its own evolution but a reflection of British epistemic legacy in Southern Cameroons (Anyangwe, 490, 2009). Because of this administrative system of indirect rule, the British had to enact governance structures that stood in tandem with British language and culture and as such, annihilated any possibility of the natural evolution of Southern Cameroonian structures of governance and polity from indigenous knowledge systems.
The system of indirect rule in Nigeria and Southern Cameroons (which, until 1954 was part of a United Nigeria) was not the official policy of the British government but evolved out of British business interests responsible to the Colonial Office, the Foreign Office and the Directors of the Royal Niger Company. These were separate entities until the formal inauguration of the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria under the authority of Royal Letters Patent and Order in Council and was realized on the 1st of January 1914 (Colonial Office Report, 187, 1954). Here, there is an oxymoronic
relationship between the letter of indirect rule and the spirit of the same. While the British touted its administration of Southern Cameroons as a hands-off approach, a speech given on the 18th of March, 1946 to the Legislative Council by then governor of Nigeria, Sir Arthur Richards (later, Lord Milverton), shows the double standard inherent in the reality of the administrative system to wit:
“In the proud record of British Colonial Administration two names stand out—those of Stamford Raffles and Lord Lugard. Speaking in Nigeria there is no need for me to say what Lugard did in bringing order out of chaos and in laying the foundations of the Nigeria that we see today… One did not argue with his swift decisions; once made they were immovable. One of his notes, on the choice of a school site, reads ‘I planted a white stick where the
Superintendent’s house should be’—and there it was, and is.” — Lord Milverton, speaking in remembrance of the British Premier Governor of Nigeria and Southern Cameroons, Sir Federick Lugard, March 18th, 1946.
In the 1946 United Nations General Assembly, the Cameroons were placed under the United Kingdom International Trusteeship system and administered as an integral part of Nigeria. In 1954, the Southern Cameroons were given quasi-regional status comprising an elected Assembly and Executive Council (Colonial Office Report, 211 –212, 1954). This effectively introduced a system of administration and legislation that was the creation of the British which, to this day, are the central tenets of the legal and administrative framework of Anglophone Cameroon.
British Colonial Epistemology
Systems of Administration and their Effects on Knowledge Institutions
British Cameroons, formally known as Southern Cameroons, was administered by a system with which the English wanted Cameroonians to comply willingly. According to Jua (39, 1995), the necessity for the Cameroonian to be "Anglicized" was one of the implications of this covert aim. But this program did not aim to convert the Cameroonian "Others" into British citizens. Instead, it was akin to cultural imperialism that helped to provide the necessary favourable conditions for the greatest degree of political and economic exploitation. Many colonial historians believe that Frederick Lugard, the system's creator, had a brilliant idea when he created it, especially in the cases where it is thought to have been successful (Taiwo, 895, 1993). On the one hand, it helped the British bear a smaller administrative burden in the regions where it was practiced. Conversely, it conserved the native systems of administration that it discovered. A more thorough examination of the system may lead to a different conclusion. In the places where it took root, this sometimes-heralded system has actually been an insidious, if unintentional, attempt to stifle progress toward true epochal change.
Colonial epistemology is a process of producing knowledge, not just an abstract idea. According to Taiwo (892, 1993), these are the areas where knowledge is kept, retrieved, analysed, and shared. In order for colonization to be considered an epochal force, a dominating approach would have had to displace, disrupt, destroy, or modify existing knowledge production systems. Colonialism did not, however, bring prosperous new modes of life to replace the outdated ones. Rather, it resulted in omissions, incompleteness, and exclusion. This article argues that through the British colonial epistemic project, current institutions of knowledge such as universities and the legal apparatus of anglophone Cameroon, which are responsible for the creation of collective identity and citizenship for the Cameroonian have fallen too short of their purposes. I posit that shortcomings of the discourse and structures in these institutions are the inevitable outcome of the final exclusion, which was also the Europeans’ fundamental premise: that Africans had already been excluded from humanity. It is easiest to view the colonial encounter as an outgrowth of haughtiness, a swaggering assurance that Europeans had exhausted the universe of mankind and that the rest of us needed to be pulled mindlessly to it. If Cameroonians had been deemed human in the
first place, there would have been no need to keep us from participating in history and the advancements humankind had made up until the colonial era, particularly in the areas of human rights and respect for individuals (Taiwo, 898, 1993). By extension, a basic recognition of our humanity might have spared many of the monuments, knowledges, and identities that attested to our human achievements in the time prior to the encounter with Europeans, in the same way that Europe's march towards ‘modernity’ made it imperative to preserve those that came before. However, this was not the case. In addition to undermining our collective identities and meaning, destroying our indigenous technology and modes of knowledge production, and eroding our ability to write indigenous history, the arrival of the Europeans and their imperiousness also contributed to the devaluation of what was useful in our accomplishments.
Citizenship, Language, and Human Experience
In British Cameroons, the citizen was the British and the “native”, the Cameroonian. Since the ‘natives’ were left out of "the forward march to modernity" and all of its consequences, it was inconsistent for colonialism to grant citizenship and all of its benefits to the colonized. According to Taiwo (896, 1993), citizenship did not exist in the colonies in the sense that it was understood in European political theory and justified as one of the benefits that the triumph of bourgeoisdom secured for even propertyless proletarians in Europe. There were native people living in the colonies who were not allowed to become citizens of their mother country while the citizens of this colony were the colonial settlers. Natives were kept out of both citizenship and the advancement of contemporary institutions. This exclusion directly led to the creation of a related exclusion. The political and legal structures that ruled the mother countries were open to people of the colonies and protectorates, but the colonized were not allowed to participate in them. These specific decisions that were made in an attempt to “keep colonial histories and their contemporary ramifications hidden from sight” and by extension, exempt the colonized from participating in institutional processes that should grant them the right to self-determination and citizenship, is known as sanctioned ignorance (Bradley, 25, 2023). It can therefore be argued that in today’s institutions of knowledge in anglophone Cameroon, due to the exclusion of the native from citizenship and the associated customs and institutions, coercion played a dominant role in the functioning of the colonial state.
This resulted in the purposeful creation of a customary law system specifically for the natives (Taiwo, 899, 1993). A lot of the things that the British claimed to be "customary law" were so ridiculous that many aboriginal people did not locate their lifestyles in what was claimed to be the entirety of their customs. In the process of ‘anglicizing’ the native, the British replaced native languages with the English language, effectively uprooting forms of knowledge pertinent to the natural rhythms of life of the native. In so doing, every aspect of language (encompassing the definitions of terms with philosophical significance, sentence constructions, and linguistic conventions like proverbs and adages) and social conventions like customary methods of resolving disputes, instructing the young, and learning about the outside world, were subjugated (Ikhane, 206, 2023).
The question of human experience for the postcolonial anglophone Cameroonian can be seen through the lens of what constitutes an “Other”. Mbembe (3, 2001), argues that narrative about the colonial African in general (and Cameroonian in particular) is a pretext for something else. According to him, the postcolonial anglophone Cameroonian is a mediation enabling the United Kingdom to admit and acquiesce its own subconscious and provide a public justification of its subjectivity of the Cameroons. This can be explained as follows: The designation of the territory as “anglophone Cameroon” or “British Southern Cameroons” reconstituted the lived experiences of the native who previously inhabited this land, as the experiences developed and produced through the lenses of British colonial systems. This reinvention broke the natural flow of the historical evolution of the Cameroonian native, and in its place, a distorted, perverse history was produced. As such, the current lived experiences of anglophone Cameroonians are only legitimate to the extent that they conform to the epistemic system constructed by British colonialism over the region. This is the basis for Racism in postcolonial anglophone Cameroon. For the purposes of this research, I define racism simply as a hierarchical relationship between a base and superstructure in the context of social relations (Nursey-Bray, 135, 1980). In order to understand how racism was and is constituted through British epistemic hegemony, it has to be made clear that the definition of racism posits a Manichean Binary. In this context, the anglophone Cameroonian under British colonialism was construed as the antithesis of British experiences. Where the British ‘citizen’ was ‘rational’, ‘civilized’, ‘loved’, ‘educated’, ‘cultured’, and White, the Cameroonian ‘native’ was respectively ‘irrational’, ‘uncivilized’, ‘hated’, ‘uneducated’, ‘uncultured’, and Black.
Physical Space and Knowledge Production in Universities in Anglophone Cameroon
An important area in which English (British) colonial policies manifest themselves is in the creation of academic institutions. As pointed out by Njoh (579, 2008), colonial epistemology created philosophies that gave rise to physical expressions in colonial urban space. To understand how structural planning in today’s anglophone Cameroon is related to its epistemic landscape, Njoh argues that it is necessary to understand the historical and philosophical foundations of spatial segregation (citizen vs native) policies and what they entail. Among the European nations who took these questionable results as gospel truth were the Germans and the British. Because of this, they strictly adhered to the idea that race was what set them apart from "others" (Njoh, 587, 2008).
Universities are a part of the new mode of knowledge creation that colonization is said to have brought to British Cameroons. They provide a very clear illustration of how underdeveloped (to use an economic term) the current knowledge production mechanism is. Universities have underdeveloped methods of producing knowledge, both in terms of material structure and social relations (Taiwo, 899, 1993). Saying that anglophone Cameroon's knowledge creation process is undeveloped runs the risk of being charged with factual falsification. Taiwo (899, 1993), argues that “the closer one looks at most of those campuses with their ostentatious, alluring physical beauty, the more they resemble the proverbial whitened sepulchre. An awareness of their sepulchral inside makes it less easy to tout them as icons of development.” Second, it would be incorrect to dismiss the university system and declare it advanced based solely on the remarkable enrolment figures, research output, and scholarly honours received. However, it is also a failure to see the hidden aspects of academicians' research and publication endeavours. It would also be ignoring the glaring disparity between the extremely small number of people who receive these honours and the great majority of people whose desire or ability to conduct study and publish is hindered by the frustrations of living in a hostile climate for academic endeavours.
Clapham (2, 1970) argues that today, the challenge lies in the fact that any attempt to analyse or explain epistemic reality using such concepts creates serious issues about the link between how academy is really practiced and the language that those who do it use to describe it. These issues encompass the authenticity, consistency, and veracity of the argument politicians and academicians provide, as well as—on a more profound level—the roles they play within the political structures that their creators are a part of. To understand just how far colonial epistemology has affected Cameroonian academic institutions today, it goes without saying that Western epistemological traditions have long recognized the connection between a person's social identity and their justificatory standing (Alcoff, 82, 2007). Identity is linked to, and occasionally determines, epistemic credibility in both ancient and contemporary canonical literature. Western philosophers have utilized a variety of factors, including gender, age, being a slave, the type of job one did, ethnic identities like Tutsi and Hutu, and during the modern era, one's racialized characteristics, to evaluate one's epistemic competence. As Jules Romain (1942) once said, “The black race has not yet produced, will never produce, an Einstein, a Stravinsky, a Gershwin.”
By concentrating on the coloniality of knowledge, the power disparity and entanglement of knowledge in Western Europe, the former colonies, and the colonies themselves become apparent (Mignolo, 366, 2018). Together, the theme covered by these articles demonstrate how colonialism had a significant and enduring effect on postcolonial anglophone Cameroon. They emphasize the significance of epistemic variety, the necessity of a more nuanced understanding of the complexity of colonial legacies, and the continuous fight for decolonial liberation.
Language, Power, and the Question of Legitimacy
European conquests and domination during the colonial era were legitimized by a racialized hierarchical system, a criterion “applied [by Europe] to impose a new social classification of the world’s population on a global scale” (Quijano, 217, 2000). Quijano argues that this new social classification created two things: a Europe which emerged as the dominant colonial power in the world through the social reidentification of the “Other”, and new geocultural identities that would be embraced by this “Other”. This in effect is the process through which Europe — and by extension the British in Cameroon — created forms of knowledge in order to describe and identify the “Other”. This Othering produced a lasting colonial legacy that we recognize today as a major form of epistemic hegemony.
The dominant Eurocentric forms of knowledge production in contemporary anglophone Cameroon’s academic institutions is a direct consequence of the coloniality of power, described as the enduring structures of dominance and control still in effect today, long after the end of the colonial era. Confirming this theory of the coloniality of power, Foucault (779, 1982) argues that the European “civilization mission” is inherently a quest to enact a power structure and is justified through the process of rationalization. Britain’s colonial conquest of Southern Cameroons was justified in Europe simply by stating that colonization and Eurocentrism was normative. Foucault was interested in how modernity produced the human being; a process he termed subjectification or subjection. He suggests that as opposed to the conventional story of modernity, it was produced in the process of a system of domination. The idea is that when we think of ourselves as rational, we are only capable of doing so under the system of a form of power. The idea of thinking is a form of power, of domination.
Foucault argues that what exists is only as a result of the limits of what we can and cannot think of. The thinkable and unthinkable depend on whether we have the conceptual tools surrounding the language rules that shape how human beings think. He agrees with Marx that these ideas come from the thinking of a social class. He sees these unarticulated rules as something more fundamental, a genealogical paradigm. This Genealogy that Foucault developed is about establishing how things have evolved. In his philosophy, Foucault tried to trace back the manner in which the modern creature emerged. He argues that what we think is progress is inherently regress. That history is a history of subjectification, a history of power, discontinuous, and regressive. In this process, power is essential and so is domination. The ultimate form of subjectification is when we become docile, obedient bodies Foucault (784, 1982). From the history of Southern Cameroons presented above, we can clearly see that this was the expectation of the U.N. and the League of Nations. The organisation that touts self-determination as a fundamental human right gave the Cameroons, without consulting its peoples to the British and the French. The realization here is stark: the West, under the umbrella of the United Nations after the Second World War, orchestrated the largest form of subjectification when it justified and legitimatised the colonisation of the Cameroons and every other colony on the planet.
Epistemic Hegemony in Education
According to Alcoff’s work on Mignolo’s Epistemology of Coloniality, it can be argued that Western emphasis on Eurocentric epistemologies in general and British colonial epistemology in Southern Cameroons in particular enforced the coloniality of knowledge (Alcoff, 80, 2007). This speaks to the manner in which, during the period of European colonialism, the creation, transfer, and validation of knowledge were intricately linked to colonial power structures. It emphasizes how knowledge contributed to the "violences" that characterized colonial authority and how knowledge maintained the oppression and perceived racial inequalities that were established at that time. The focus of Alcoff's examination of Mignolo's study is on subaltern knowledge which is information generated by underrepresented populations, indigenous communities, and people shunned by prevailing epistemic frameworks. This definition comprises the conceptualization of epistemic hegemony provided by this research. By exposing their role in upholding colonial hierarchies and stifling alternative forms of knowledge, Eurocentric epistemologies are challenged by the coloniality of knowledge.
In the production of knowledge, language is a central tenet. To comprehend epistemic violence in testimony, one must first recognize a basic aspect of language use. This characteristic relates to the speakers' relationships of dependency on their listeners (Dotson 237, 2011). Certain types of reciprocity are necessary for all speakers to engage in fruitful language interactions. Because an audience may or may not fulfil a particular speaker's linguistic demands in a given engagement, speakers are susceptible in language exchanges. One begins to contemplate on the effects of a colonial system that emphasized the use of the English Language in a part of the world where no one spoke or understood the English language. In order to subvert indigenous knowledge systems, the British first had to assert the dominance of the English language over southern Cameroonians. This epistemic violence now manifests itself through the hegemonistic persistence of the use of English as the primary language in education.
There are three concepts that this research defines. These include epistemic hegemony through sanctioned ignorance, language and power of linguistic systems, and humanity and knowledge production. In this literature, I fragment established knowledge paradigms in order to reveal their inner workings and hidden power structures. This theory helps to capture just how much epistemic hegemony still influences discourse and structures in academic institutions within anglophone Cameroon. Also, by deconstructing language, I show the inherent power that resides in linguistic legacies. According to Fanon (18, 1952), language is “a means to assume a culture and to support the weight of a civilization”. In order to provide a clear conceptual definition for the concept of sanctioned ignorance, it is relevant to emphasize that Eurocentric forms of knowledge development during the British colonial rule in southern Cameroons created a sociological barrier to the acquisition and transmission of indigenous knowledges and that these epistemological barriers still exist today (Savransky, 12, 2017). Although challenging epistemic hegemony through sanctioned ignorance may prove exemplary, it is however not without its dangers. By focusing entirely on Britain’s colonial epistemic project, it is possible to neglect other barriers to traditional forms of knowledge production by leaning too far on Eurocentric views of epistemic hegemony.
Colonialism prioritized Eurocentric paradigms in knowledge production and goes beyond political power. This paradigm clarifies how British epistemologies continue to influence language hierarchy, power dynamics, and educational content in Anglophone Cameroon. As Fanon (18, 1952) explains “Every colonized people — in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nation”. This means that the anglophone Cameroonian can only become a true member of society depending on their mastery of British culture. As shown below, the identity of the English Cameroonian is only worth its weight in how much they have become “anglicized”. Colonised peoples were reduced to seen objects by the colonial gaze, a collection of tools and practices employed by colonial authorities to see and depict colonial reality. The status and stature of colonial subjects were established and set by European spectators through their representations. It upheld the division between "Other" (colonized, barbaric) and "Us" (colonizers, civilized), and it justified colonial dominance and authority by degrading colonial people. Because the colonial gaze still influences representations of customary methods of knowledge production in anglophone Cameroon, it is possible to see that colonial epistemologies perpetuated racial hierarchies impacting education, identity formation, and political agency. How this reflects in today’s institutions of learning is simple. It is commonly perceived in anglophone Cameroon that one’s English language prowess is a symbol of their capacity to produce, articulate, and propagate knowledge while indigenous methods of knowledge production, although abundant, are relegated to the sidelines and regarded as exotic and yet despised. This process through which forms of knowledge are actively suppressed is defined as sanctioned ignorance (Bradley, 25, 2023).
The persistence of British colonial epistemology in academic institutions of anglophone Cameroon is also visible in the structure that allocates funding for and publishes research as well as providing access to scholarly networks. The study of Cameroonian epistemology defies linear progression. Concrete delineations between past, present, and future forms of knowledge production prove elusive. However, amidst this complexity, the emergence of Cameroonian epistemology—a distinct way of knowing—predates European colonization. This epistemological continuity challenges the conventional demarcation between Cameroon’s historical past and its contemporary discourse structure in universities. To comprehend the impact of colonialism on today’s anglophone Cameroonian discourse, we must dissect the essence of colonial epistemology. Ikhane (205, 2023) defines African epistemology as “abstract(ed) features of knowledge that denote the practice of knowledge within various contiguous African cultural contexts.” In practical terms, it encompasses ways of knowing and conceptualizing within specific African cultural frameworks. This indigenous knowledge system predates colonial encounters, rooted in local traditions, oral histories, and holistic perspectives. Colonial epistemology, however, emerged under different circumstances. It refers to the ways of knowing that are deeply entrenched in colonialism. These epistemologies often prioritized Western methods and perspectives while marginalizing or dismissing non-Western knowledge systems.
Why Are We Stuck in Criticism?
“Tomorrow,” Nongo said, “perhaps we will be able to tell if your blindness is curable.”
—Legend of Tarik
When a person is in a fight for their life, too many things can go wrong. The keenest observer might survive long enough, and the one that pays attention to only the most obvious things losses track of the spear that finds the secrets of their lives and spills them. Today, post-colonial research is stuck on critical theories, finding mechanisms to contradict and assuage colonial theories. The problem with this pattern, however, is that postcolonial research is a mere reproduction of colonial research. It is a refutation of European exceptionalism. I would argue that, because we cannot criticize European colonisation outside of the colonial rhetoric itself, whatever criticism we offer is an antithesis of colonial narratives; the other side of the same coin. Critical theories reproduce the colonial binary. It is either we are ‘all civilized’ or ‘we are and you are not’ while at the same time using the same categorizations of the colonial gaze to disparage the narrative. This is a vicious cycle out of which it is impossible to emerge using the very conceptual tools that produced the problem in the first place.
As Burney (41, 2012) argues, postcolonial theories have provided the framework through which critiques of contemporary international relations have been provided, as well as a perpetual lens for explaining Gayatri Spivak’s “othering”. I argue here, boldly enough, that decolonisation cannot come from postcolonial critique.
We can explain and understand colonialism through postcolonial critique. In this context, we can explain the subject of the subaltern, the distortion of the natural, uninterrupted histories of the pre-colonized but postcolonial theories themselves offer many avenues for their own critiques. This is where the cyclic nature of the critique comes into play.
For the postcolonial anglophone Cameroonian, a postcolonial theory that applies is the classical Negritude Movement. As argued above, what colonialism
produced in contemporary anglophone Cameroon is a racialized Manichean binary in which the white citizen was construed as the thesis to the black native. In this regard, we can deduce the informal but necessary creation of some form of ‘black consciousness’ through which Europe could justify its colonialisation of the peoples of the Cameroons. Because of colonialism, a clear racialized structure was created that promoted socio-political imbalances and prejudices in the colony skewed in the favour of the White ‘citizen’. Nielsen (343, 2013) argues that these concepts are capable of re-invention. The beauty of invention is that it is always in a constant state of reinvention so that a simple concept, ideal, or thing can reflect current realities rather than look to the past for a definition of its identity. “If resistance possibilities are structurally linked to contingent power relations and the latter involve free subjects, then individual re-narration and communal transformation are ever-present, open, viable options." (Nielson, 343, 2013).
Postcolonial critique as a decolonisation project is, as I have argued, a cyclic reproduction of colonial rhetoric without the possibility of reinvention. It is stuck in a pattern of explanation that tries to make some sense of colonial horrors but it is by itself incapable of positing a clear path towards true liberation for the oppressed. In some way, a critique of subjectification further takes away the agency of the ‘subject’ more than it provides a semblance of solace to the same. The Black postcolonial anglophone Cameroonian in this literature somehow does not have an identity outside of the phrase “Black postcolonial anglophone Cameroonian”. As long as this narrative is used, whether in critiques or in colonial production within Cameroon, there is no liberation for the ‘subject’ in the critique or the colonial literature. As Fanon writes: “1find myself one day in the world, and I acknowledge one right for myself: the right to demand human behaviour from the other. And one duty: the duty never to let my decisions renounce my freedom. ... I am not a prisoner of History. I must not look for the meaning of my destiny in that direction. I must constantly remind myself that the real leap consists of introducing invention into life. In the world I am heading for, I am endlessly creating myself. (Black Skin, 204)”
I seek to go beyond a critique of the critique of colonialism but first I must establish a context on which my philosophy is based. Epistemic decolonisation is not an attempt to ask the black postcolonial anglophone Cameroonian to denounce their race. It is not an attempt to create a raceless, classless world. These are reactionary in nature and serve only to fuel the fires of racial hierarchy. In an attempt to decolonize Africa, Europeans and North Americans alike have set up social services on the continent through which they aim to provide aid and essential services to the people. But then they encounter populations speaking with ‘funny pidgin’ accents and so the ‘helpers’ have to adjust their language and tone in return so as to communicate with the ‘African’. Their conversation assumes a structure that allows them to ‘talk down’ to ‘these people’ as a doctor would to a patient suffering from dementia. This condescension is a stigma of a dereliction inherent in the relations of the ‘helper’ towards the ‘African’.
Fanon (22, 1986) argues that “This may be the reason for the strivings of contemporary Negroes: to prove the existence of a black civilization to the white world at all costs.” And so, we find ourselves again stuck with the same narrative.
Challenging British Colonial Epistemology
In the whole world no poor devil is lynched, no wretch is tortured, in whom I too am not degraded and murdered.
—Aimé Césaire, Et les chiens se taisent
In his fictional novel The Legend of Tarik, Walter Dean Myers writes:
“We see in the world that which we see in ourselves … we have seen truth from so many sides we often forget its face… Tell me, you know fishermen, have you known hunters as well?” Nongo asked.
“Of course.”, Tarik answered. “People who eat must have hunters about them.”
“And did the fisherman fill their hearts with anger for the fish?” Nongo asked. “Did the hunters hate their prey?”
“No.” Tarik said.
“Little brother, what would you say if I told you that there should be no anger in your heart for the man who killed your father?”
“Then I would say that you are a fool!” Tarik spat the words through clenched teeth.
— Excerpt from The Legend of Tarik by Dean Myers.
The goal of epistemic decolonisation is to recreate systems of knowledge production outside the categories of Western colonization. In the following recommendations, I make it clear that half-hearted, incomplete decolonial projects must be completely discarded. Epistemic decoloniality embodies the recreation of a dialectic; a dialectic that does not see the world in Manichean terms, where the ‘primitive’ conditions of existence is an outflow of natural philosophy. There is the suffering that humankind in its search for meaning, beset by the tempests of the untamable and indifferent universe, is imbued in the archetypes of its collective consciousness. There is also the suffering inflicted on a group through subjectification by another group which thinks itself the masters of the material world. The former is a condition of human existence, one that recognized, puts the human being in a position of radical humility. The latter is an imposition upon the way of life of a group.
Reimagining Anglophone Cameroonian Identity and Agency
Fanon writes that the Black, postcolonial individual when among their own feels almost no occasion to experience his being through the eyes of others. At the moment of their birth, the postcolonial anglophone Cameroonian is imbued with the strength and will to find meaning in things. The natural rhythms of their lives are filled with the spirit to attain the source of this material world only for them to realize, with horror, that they were an object amongst other objects (Fanon, 82, 1952). The postcolonial Cameroonian is exposed to the capitalist, globalist world. Driven by technical advances that make the boundaries of human experience limitless, the current realities of the world beset the postcolonial anglophone Cameroonian with the possibilities of seeing a Manichean world, a white world in which this individual faces difficulties in developing their bodily schema. He is filled with uncertainty; his consciousness is a negating entity. Fanon calls this a ‘third person consciousness’. This postcolonial world does not impose itself on the individual but because of British epistemic hegemony, sanctioned ignorance, and colonial unknowing, there is now a definitive structuring of the world that creates a dialectic between his body and the world. It is only in the meaning of a man’s life that you can own his heart.
British epistemic hegemony, as explained above, created a distinction between the ‘native’ and the ‘citizen’. The identity of the citizen was only legitimized to the extent that they embodied the culture of the White ‘citizen’. And so, the postcolonial anglophone Cameroonian turns to laboratory products created through researches that might make it possible for “the miserable Negro to whiten [himself] and thus to throw off the burden of that corporeal malediction” (Fanon, 84, 1952). The categorization of the Negro, the postcolonial ‘native’ as the antithesis of the White ‘citizen’ created an internalized complex in the postcolonial individual that makes him acutely aware of his ‘barbarism’ in a world that sees him as an object of fear. His agency; His ability to be absolutely responsible for his body, for his race, for his ancestors becomes subjugated. His identity becomes one defined by his blackness, his ethnic characteristics, and subservience (U.S. Army War College Study, 1925).
Institutions of knowledge in postcolonial anglophone Cameroon have the imperative to dwell fully and cautiously on the subject of identity and agency. It cannot be emphasized enough that this project must be carried out with the utmost care. Institutions of learning must adopt curricula that bring a massive “strength joined with a matchless clearness, that, regardless of the merely trivial or unimportant, bear with unerring sagacity upon the prominences of the subject and, grappling with its difficulties, rarely fail to surmount them.” (Chittenden, 13, 1972). Limited in my scope of natural philosophy, I suggest that the curricula for institutions of learning in postcolonial anglophone Cameroon be rooted in a philosophy that, produced without resentment toward European colonialism as well as avoiding the possibilities of disparaging the realities of its history, guides the minds of the decolonial architect to see themselves as minute parts to the stupendous whole — each to each, each to all and all to each — in the mysterious bonds of a ceaseless, reciprocal influence. To break out of the third false consciousness, knowledge institutions should systematically produce a revitalised body of knowledge that shows the individual the material beauties, splendours, and sublimities, however rich in glory, and endless in extent, of an unconcealed intelligent design; a design that the postcolonial anglophone Cameroonian can aspire to in order to derive a clear meaning to their lives.
I argue that epistemic decoloniality such as is described above returns the body of the postcolonial anglophone Cameroonian back to themselves. This is important because lived experiences are situated in the body. The mind of an individual belongs to their body. It is not possible to decolonized knowledge without addressing the question of the embodiment of knowledge. Du Bois (57, 2007) writes that “in the Black World, the Preacher and Teacher embodied once the ideals of this people … the mystery of knowing; but today the danger is that these ideals, with their simple beauty and weird inspiration, will suddenly sink to a question of cash and a lust for gold.”
Decoloniality is not about making proclamations such as “Black Lives Matter!”, it is not about seeking recompense from Europe or demanding an apology. The reality is that colonialism happened. What we do now is entirely on us. Fanon argues that “Each generation must discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it, in relative opacity. In the underdeveloped countries preceding generations have simultaneously resisted the insidious agenda of colonialism and paved the way for the emergence of the current struggles” (Fanon, 167, 1961). The philosophical approach to epistemic decolonisation is posited here as a mechanism of developing a collective consciousness in the post-colony that produces a national culture certain to “break the back of colonialism”. The institution of knowledge provides the atmosphere through which the internalized rage, wretchedness, self-hatred, abdication and denial warring inside the postcolonial anglophone Cameroonian can be fully catharised. Repression, in all its forms must be completely eliminated for this process to take place.
To this effect, Hegel (21, 1807) writes “When it has shown this completely, the Spirit has made its existence identical with its essence; it has itself for its object just as it is, and the abstract element of immediacy, and of the separation of knowing and truth, is overcome. Being is then absolutely mediated; it is a substantial content which is just as immediately the property of the 'I', it is self-like or the Notion.” The monumental effort of philosophy is the creation of a dialectic that is neither ‘colonial’ nor ‘postcolonial’. It must traverse these moments and it must at once be essential and non-essentialist in its nature. It must posit a cognition of what is without disparaging what has been. There is an unease that is inherent in the subject of this project “partly because there are different types of cognition, and one of them might be more appropriate than another for the attainment of this goal, so that we could make a ‘bad’ choice of means ; and partly because cognition is a faculty of a definite kind and scope, and thus, without a more precise definition of its nature and limits, we might grasp clouds of error instead of the heaven of truth.” (Hegel, 73, 1807).
Reinventing the Personhood of the Anglophone Cameroonian
Subverting the Manichean Binary begins with an acknowledgement of the contentions and raging wars that is the everyday reality of the postcolonial anglophone Cameroonian as they struggle for liberation from the colonial rhetoric. It begins, Fanon claims, with the understanding and critical recollection of the historical moment that birthed the struggle. It begins with an acknowledgement that a remembrance of the distortion and perversion of the personhood of the postcolonial Cameroonian will elicit anger and fill the individual with hatred, pity, and shame (Baldwin, I am Not Your Negro). It is the recognition that we were made to live on our knees, that we have been defined, indefinitely by European narratives, that our collective history is the history of strife. The hatred that the postcolonial individual feels is a hatred for their Black self, a hatred that originates from the double-consciousness produced by Britain’s racist colonial project. Because of this double consciousness, the postcolonial anglophone Cameroonian looks at themselves through the eyes of others; a measuring tape of a world that looks upon him with contempt and pity, a world which does not yield him any true self-consciousness (Du Bois, 8, 2007).
The process of reclaiming the personhood of the Black postcolonial anglophone Cameroonian begins when they acknowledge, as Fanon states “at the risk of arousing the resentment of my coloured brothers, [I will say] that the Black is not a [man].” (Fanon, 1, 1952). At the time of his writing this monumental work, anglophone Cameroon was still firmly under the government of Great Britain’s Colonial Administration. Tracing, therefore, the historical moment of the struggle for liberation can be recognized as that moment when the stroke of a pen sealed the fate of the Cameroons at the Treaty of Versailles under the Covenant of the League of Nations. Once this moment has been recognized, Fanon argues, the process of reclamation then moves into a “zone of nonbeing, an extraordinarily sterile and arid region, an utterly naked declivity where an authentic upheaval can be born.” This is not an attempt to exorcise the ghosts of their past, but to reinvent their ‘self’ by giving up “projecting onto the world an antimony that coexists within them” (Fanon, 2, 1952). This process is violent, as it involves the post colonial’s descent into a zone of the occult wherein, they must undergo aberrations of affect and be re-rooted into the core of a material universe from which they must be extricated. To subvert colonial rhetoric, the postcolonial individual must be free from themselves.
One of the few prominent experts who understood the psychoanalytical interpretation of the question of the postcolonial was Fanon, and as such, many of the assertions made in this research belong to the Fanonian school of thought. This process of reinvention and reclamation is psychoanalytical and is grounded in economic and social realities (Fanon, 4, 1952). I suggest, therefore, that postcolonial anglophone institutions of learning must begin their academic curricula not with lessons of the history of the Roman Empire but with a systemic enactment of psychoanalytic processes which young Cameroonians should undergo at the start of their academic journeys. The reason for this is so that, from the very beginning when they start understanding a world that looks at them with contempt, they would have undergone a psychoanalytic process that removes any feeling of hatred, shame, and/or double-consciousness from themselves. This process will not change how the world sees the postcolonial Cameroonian, but it will provide the basis for which the Cameroonian will never again see themselves through the lens of the colonial narrative. The process of epistemic decoloniality must be undertaken with extreme care so as not to create systems that produce incomplete knowledge (as incomplete knowledge can easily be manipulated and perverted) nor systems that rigidify knowledge production out of which new knowledge cannot emerge through the natural rhythms of life of the liberated individual.
Institutions of knowledge are well-positioned to provide conducive atmospheres for this violent form of psychoanalysis. These institutions can produce knowledge that deliver clear insight into the psychosis created in the postcolonial individual by British colonization. This is born out of the realization that colonial racism is not different from any form of racism (Fanon, 65, 1952).
Making the Radical Break from Colonial Rhetoric
It is worthy of note here that a radical break from the colonial rhetoric does not mean a freezing of the natural flow of history. This, however, is a recalibration of systemic measures that produce new knowledge about the postcolonial Cameroonian without the reproduction of colonial categories or the re-traditionalization of the post colony. As such, the very structure of the physical space and the essence of the pedagogy of the knowledge institution must be radically reinvented. Again, this must be done without essentialising knowledge so that the process does not racialize itself. It cannot be done as an antithesis of European systems of knowledge production but simply as a reimagined system of knowledge production. As Fanon (12, 1952) writes,
“The only possibility of regaining one’s balance is to face the whole problem, for all these discoveries, all these inquiries lead only in one direction: to make man admit that he is nothing, absolutely nothing—and that he must put an end to the narcissism on which he relies in order to imagine that he is different from the other ‘animals.’”
In order to challenge the epistemic hegemony of Britain over anglophone Cameroon, we must first acknowledge, then radically reinvent the language and narrative used to describe the current realities of the post-colony. This includes language that describes the structure of the leadership, the state of the economy, and the social systems that are imposed on the post-colony and used only in relation to what exists elsewhere. Epistemic decoloniality involves bearing responsibility for the ‘deracialisation’ of thought. It begins when institutions of learning produce knowledge that does not stand in opposition to any other knowledge or form pertaining to colonial epistemology. There is a real risk here: producing knowledge must be rooted in social and economic realities of the postcolonial individual so as not to create esoteric forms of knowledge. Fanon (177, 1961) argues that this risk for the postcolonial anglophone Cameroonian intellectual is that it “may take individual to unusual heights in the sphere of poetry, at an existential level [where] it has often proved a dead end. When he decides to return to the routine of daily life, after having been roused to fever pitch by rubbing shoulders with his people, whoever they were and whoever they may be, all he brings back from his adventures are terribly sterile clichés. He places emphasis on customs, traditions, and costumes, and his painful, forced search seems but a banal quest for the exotic.”
Institutions of learning must strive, with grand ambition, to situate the project of epistemic decoloniality firmly at the core of creating a national culture that radically changes the thought processes of its peoples. It must be a united effort that joins the peoples of the Cameroons and unites them in strength.
Conclusion
British Southern Cameroons, a colony of the British Colonial Empire emerged from the Great Wars of Europe. It was presented in the houses of Polity as a bargaining tool, a land whose people were incapable of self-determination, and a Territory to Mandated under the Trusteeship of the British Colonial Office because, somehow, the Cameroonian had no identity or agency that was understood or accepted by Europe.
For the British to understand this new and strange land, the Colonial Empire had to recreate the history of the land and its peoples. Reinventing their personhood developed a false consciousness in the colonial Cameroonian as they were suddenly plunged into the realization that they did not own their land nor their personhood. To recognize themselves as human beings, distorted, perverted, and broken, the postcolonial anglophone Cameroonian had to assume British culture, identity, Whiteness, and ‘civilization’.
In this research, I explored the extent to which the word “anglophone” in English plays an important role in shaping the identity of the southern Cameroonian and how this form of identification provides them with access to academic institutions, and how this access determines what method of knowledge production they must imbue throughout their tenure at such institutions. We also explore the degree that language dictates the limits by which members of this community are bound politically, and the governing structures that enforce these limits.
This paper suggests that epistemic decoloniality is achievable through knowledge institutions in three ways: reinventing the personhood of the postcolonial individual, reclaiming their agency, and finally, making a complete radical break from the colonial rhetoric. These methods suggested are limited in their scope because their implementation require further research in psychoanalysis, philosophy, arts, and natural sciences. Another avenue for research could take a Marxist approach but must be constrained to the extent by which Marxist ideals explain class struggle in relation to colonial racism without acceding with any assertion or negation of the practical applicability of Marxism as a decolonial project. Further studies can explore epistemic decoloniality by examining Hegelian philosophy. This is an incredible avenue for the exploration of the philosophical aspect of the subject. The question of national culture cannot be theoretically founded without the creation of the institution of knowledge. A discourse on national culture without first setting the stage for knowledge recreation would be incomplete and might border on nationalism.
There is significant work that has to be done to produce literature that at best, may become a foundational document out of which will emerge an influence not limited to the here and now, but surely will, as time flows into eternity and space into infinity, roll up a measureless blessing, in inconceivable swellings along the infinite curve.
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