Academia & Intellectuals- Winner of the VP Franklin Award in Africana Studies

Ever since I was little, my Mom has told me the story of a woman from her home named Mee Mwasighwa. Mee Mwasighwa was a foreteller, someone who had the gift of visions of the future. One of her most significant visions was that of a white millipede that would come through our home and move through it continually as though it had wheels. Our ethnic group is called the Taita, and our home is two hours away from the Coast of Kenya. What Mee Mwasighwa was describing was the building of the train, which was one of the first markers of British colonialism for our ethnic group. Our working theory is that Mee Mwasighwa was part of a family or group of what is called ‘Mlodi’, people who were spiritual leaders and guides within the community. They worked to pray with people for things like rain (then called rain makers) or to guide the community through tough times. They engaged in rituals and practices that were to connect people not only to each other, but also to the animals around them, the land that we levied on and the divine that we believed in. They were what I would consider intellectuals within their community, because they were producers of knowledge and philosophy, but also practiced community building and strengthening. They engaged in praxis.

My Mom first heard the story of Mee Mwasighwa’s visions from her grandmother, who was alive when Mee Mwasighwa was still alive, but has heard the story from others that had the same story passed down from their family members. In recent years, I’ve been trying to find out more about the history of the Taita and about our traditions and cultural practices that have been lost through colonialism and the imposition of Christianity. I bought a book called “Making Ethnic Ways, Communities and Their Transformations in Taita, Kenya from 1800-1950.” As I looked through the book I began to search for mentions of people like Mee Mwasighwa, people who were spiritual leaders or who were storytellers within the community. As one can probably imagine, the book did not do them any justice, instead talking about a missionary who worked to convert them. They didn’t even call them the same name as what I had been told they were called. My frustration with this, and with much of academia, is that the historian that is supposed to be mapping the before, during and after of colonization does not see value in the beliefs held before, and only focuses on how they resist to Christianity.

I want to use Patricia Hill Collins chapter on Black Feminist Epistemology to try and relocate who we look at as intellectuals within communities, and how even current academia does not take them into consideration. Black Feminist Epistemology is about how to look at meaning making and transmission with Black women. It’s about how knowledge is created, how it’s tested and how it passed down. It’s not as stringent on who is doing the work, but rather how they are doing it. Though Hill Collins is writing about her experiences as a Black American woman, much of what she talked about resonated with what I have seen as an African woman, and how my community builds and interacts with each other.

The first criteria in which Hill Collins discusses is that of lived experience. Lived experience refers to exactly that, what we have seen in our lives. Speaking from a place of experience is different from speaking from reading something in a book or being an outsider looking in. Hill Collins uses examples of women along about how though they may not have formal schooling, they have wisdom, they have sense, they have what they have seen. They have wisdom. (Hill Collins, 1990) When I think about Mee Mwasighwa and the Mlodi, I think about people who have knowledge of what we now call ' ‘Indigenous African belief systems' and spirituality because their role in society was to practice those rituals and to guide others to do so. They were trusted because they were experienced in their practice, and because it was knowledge that had been passed down through family lines. This is in contrast to traditional academia, in which we often study writers who write as removed, “objective” onlookers of a subject. In her book “Abolition Geographies,” Ruth Wilson Gilmore discusses the role of the scholar-activist and talks about how the connection between theory and practice depends on the “key insight that the observer and observed are in the same critical field.” (Wilson Gilmore, 2022) This means that the strength of the intellectual and their practices grow as they grow closer to their subject. In this context, the scholar activist is not necessarily an academic, but rather someone who is in the work of supporting their community. They are able to practice that through their experiences within their community. They do not have to be objective, as objectivity would take away from the nuance that experience gives. That nuance, the intricate perspective that experience gives is what gives them validity.

The second criteria that Hill Collins discusses is that of the use of dialogue in knowledge. The main point here is that knowledge and knowledge claims cannot be created through individuals. They are communal. Meaning making is communal because culture and beliefs are a communal experience. (Hill Collins, 1990) Mee Mwasighwa was part of a family or initiated group that were known as the Mlodi, but whose work was to talk to the divine, to the people, to the land and find alignment with all them. In the book that I bought, they don’t even use the right word to describe Mlodi, nor do they go in depth about why they were so important to the community. This takes away from understanding their role and how they communicated. We use dialogue and language to not only make meaning, but to wrestle with it and to pass it down. Dialogue and language are also a central part to epistemology because they allow for self-definition and self-determination. In “Decolonising the Mind,” Ngugi wa Thion’go talks about how making people speak English language was central in colonization, as it allowed for English parameters to define the people they were colonizing. (wa Thiong'o, 1986) It made us ‘natives’ and made our homes ‘colonies’. That was language given to us that did not represent our communities, our identities and our beliefs. Wa Thion’go talks about how he was part of a community theater that put on a play about a family dealing with the effects of colonialism in his native language of Kikuyu. The topic and the language used allowed for community members to develop the story, to be part of the play and to personalize it to fit their community and their own struggles. (wa Thiong'o, 1986) So part of being an intellectual is being able to use your own language and to do so with other members of your community. It is valid because it is self determined and the language is specific. It is not language that was given, but language that is indigenous. That’s what makes it valid.

The third criteria that Hill Collins discusses is the ethics of caring. This means that you have to talk and write and move from a palace of care, and act as though you do. (Hill Collins, 1990) The underlying theme through this entire work, and the work of wa Thion’go and Wilson Gilmore is that of the value of community. There is no Black Radical Thought, Black Radical tradition, revolutionary movements, anti colonial resistance or anything else without the centering of community and communal good. In an article about maroon societies in Maryland, Celeste Winston talks about how one of the main marks of a maroon society is an “place based ethics of care.” For maroon societies, this referred to coming together as a community to have different roles in sustaining the land so the land could sustain them. Sustenance was community, and giving back was a huge part of that. In this context, the work of the intellectual is to support the community. For Mee Mwasighwa, her support was in her connection to the divine and her ability to channel that. It was also in the warning of the tragic vision she saw for her community. Her work was integral to her community, and she cared because it was her community. She was invested, obviously. And so the role of the intellectual can not be just to study and take and then abandon. It should have a purpose in the community, in supporting people and in giving back. That also gives it validity.

The last criteria that Hill Collins talks about is that of the ethic of personal accountability. This means that an intellectual must have a reason that they know. Interrogating the intellectual is as important as interrogating their beliefs or knowledge. This ties back into lived experience and into the value of doing things for the community. (Hill Collins, 1990) How do you know? What makes you so sure? Who are you to say? For Mee Mwasighwa, she knew because she was part of a lineage of people who did the same work as her. They played the same role that she did in society and passed it down to her. She had reason. Because how can your knowledge be valid if your reason behind it is not? Credibility means that you are accountable to your claims. They are tied to your community, to your lived experiences and are shaped by your personal language. That’s what makes an intellectual, and what makes their work valid.

In recent years, in my observation, academia has taken a certain turn to make the effort to be more socially aware and conscious. Though I’m sure that this is something that has been happening slowly over time, in my personal experience the difference between academia pre and post 2020 is worlds apart. Even in sociology, which is supposed to deal with all the tough realities of the world, it has been different. One of the biggest differences, or ‘social phenomena,’ has been how people now have the ‘correct’ language and jargon to be able to describe how the world works. Now everyone can use the language of colonialism, gentrification, intersectionality, masculinization, just to name a few. My issue is that I don’t believe that having this language gives on the authority to speak as though they know. Being able to read DuBois, regurgitate his words, and then act as an intellectual in a space is not, and should not be the goal of academia and a move towards a more equitable space in academia. Though DuBois is obviously great and an incredible sociologist, he is not the only intellectual of his time. Following the words of Particia Hill Collins, looking for an understanding or looking to find the belief systems of Black women in her case, but of other groups as well cannot be found in the traditional, Western bounds of intellectuals. It can’t all be university professors and writers, because, as I’ve shown, those people were not the meaning makers in many communities. Looking at those people only works to recreate and reinforce Western belief systems, because we are not taking a look at who the true intellectuals are, and what they did. We are, instead, looking at a narrow, non holistic view of a community. We’re not looking at the musicians, the farmers, the spiritual healers, the doulas or other people who had very specific roles in society. We’re ignoring the culture shapers and transmitters in communities. And so our understanding of all these topics, even as we’re given the ‘correct’ language to talk about these difficult issues, are not necessarily reflective of the truth of the people that we talk about. Even in an effort to be the more ‘aware’ academia is still filtering through who is considered a valuable, valid person to listen to, ignoring what I would call the true intellectuals, and missing huge parts of the picture.

Citations

Collins, P. H. (2000). Black Feminist Epistemology . In Black Feminist thought (pp. 252–271). essay, Routledge.

Gilmore, R. W. (2022). Scholar Activists in the Mix. In Abolition geography: Essays towards liberation (pp. 92–103). essay, Verso Books.

Thiongʼo, N. wa. (1986). The Language of African Theatre . In Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African literature (pp. 34–62). essay, East African Educational Publishers.

Winston, C. (2021). Maroon geographies. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2021.1894087