“The cannon compels the body, the school bewitches the soul”
— Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Ambiguous Adventure
The most violent spectacles of imperialism are visited upon colonised bodies, but the most durable are inflicted upon consciousness. Colonial regimes were – and are – predicated on epistemicide; the erasure of entire ordering systems of knowledge. When such systems could not be destroyed outright – as was the case with Islam – they were often reorganised from within. Core texts remained unchanged, but the consciousness of the reader and the nature of knowing itself was fundamentally altered.
In this seminar we learn about methodological, epistemological, and ontological tools for making liberating, emancipatory interventions. That is to say we carefully deliberate on concrete research approaches, philosophies of knowledge, and ways of being that help us counteract colonial incursions in our consciousness. Most importantly, we explore how radical knowledge practices can free us from bondage in academia and beyond.
Watch Seminar 1
Watch Seminar 2
Teacher
Dr. Rudolph Bilal Ware is a historian of Africa and Islam. He earned his PhD in history in 2004 from the University of Pennsylvania where he was trained in African History, African-American History, and Islamic Intellectual History. He is currently an associate professor in the department of History at the University of California-Santa Barbara, and the founder and director of the Initiative for the Study of Race, Religion, and Revolution (ISRRAR). His first book, The Walking Qur’an: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and History in West Africa, explores the history of a thousand years of Quran schooling in the region. He is the author of multiple articles on Muslim anti-slavery movements in Africa and the Atlantic World, and his most recent book, Jihad of the Pen, explores Sufi thought in West Africa.
