Foundations of Black Epistemology
Knowledge Discourse in Africana Philosophy

Adebayo Oluwayomi (Author)

9781439925485

Paperback / softback, published 1 July 2025

266 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.4 kg

"[A] necessary read for all those who, despite the global dominance of post-truth ideology, still believe in the importance of knowledge and its power to make the world a better place." — Modern Times Review

“Oluwayomi has provided an array of epistemologies, in both their competing lines of reason and the convergent lines of agreement. In so doing, he uncovers the foundations—that is, the background assumptions and starting points enlivening a heritage of issues and debates long hidden in plain sight. Oluwayomi is to be applauded. Foundations of Black Epistemology will be part of the ongoing sphere of books providing enlightenment and will fuel new debates.” — Dr. Leonard Harris, Joyce and Edward E. Brewer Chair in Applied Ethics at Purdue University

“Foundations of Black Epistemology takes readers on a challenging, necessary, and innovative philosophical journey, one that has deep metaphilosophical implications for how we must think about Black people as social epistemologists, epistemic agents, and creators of a rich subdisciplinary area within the context of Africana philosophy. Through insightful exegeses of the works of Frederick Douglass, Phillis Wheatley, Frantz Fanon, Steve Banto Biko, and other Black scholars, Adebayo Oluwayomi ensures that we critically remain cognizant of tracing the deformations of Black thought, but he also demands that we remain attentive as he tells a fecund historical narrative of Black epistemic agency that humanizes Black modes of being-in-the-world and legitimizes the independence of Black intellectual thought.” — George Yancy, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Philosophy at Emory University

Foundations of Black Epistemology is Adebayo Oluwayomi’s bold endeavor to delineate Black epistemology as a new sub-disciplinary focus in contemporary Africana or Black philosophy. He engages in a rigorous historical study of Black intellectual history to show how seminal Black thinkers have long been interested in and engaged with questions concerning the phenomenon of human knowledge, and questions around human agency, including practical considerations regarding the social and political value of knowledge.

Foundations of Black Epistemology examines writings by Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. DuBois, Frantz Fanon, Steve Bantu Biko, Huey P. Newton, and Kathleen Neal Cleaver. Each chapter addresses issues of self-knowledge, self-assertion, Black consciousness, or anticolonialism and its relation to personal and political epistemologies.

Oluwayomi offers innovative perspectives on the formulation, deduction, and interrogation of epistemological themes within Black Africana philosophy. By considering the important epistemological theories and arguments in Black philosophy particularly in the last 150 to 200 years, Foundations of Black Epistemology promises to generate new discussions around this necessary field of Black Africana philosophy.