Knowledge free and ‘unfree’: Epistemic tensions in plant knowledge at the Cape in the 17th and 18 th centuries

Geri Augustoa, "Knowledge free and ‘unfree’: Epistemic tensions in plant knowledge at the Cape in the 17th and 18 th centuries", International Journal of African Renaissance Studies: Multi-, Inter- and Transdisciplinarity Vol2(2), 2007, pp.136-182.

 

Abstract

 

This article utilises the same epistemic objects, particular indigenous medicinal plants of the Cape region, to explore the gamut of epistemologies in contested, dynamic tension in the early Cape Colony: That of the frontiersman, the Khoikhoi, the Sonqua or Sankwe, and the slave. Drawing on a transdisciplinary set of literatures, the article puts Africana studies, the study of indigenous knowledge systems, and social studies of science and technology in wider conversation with each other, and argues for the adoption of an epistemic openness, methodologies which ‘braid’ seemingly separate strands of social history and differing knowledge practices, and cross-border collaboration among scholars of African and African diasporic knowledges. The findings and interpretation suggest new ways to view the ‘multiplexity’ of early indigenous southern African botanical, therapeutic and ecological knowledges, as well as the necessity for rethinking both the construction of colonial sciences and contemporary concerns about indigenous knowledge, biosciences and their 21st century interaction.