Harry Wilson Kapatika

Fellow: Department of History, MA

Harry Wilson Kapatika is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Philosophy at the University of the Western Cape. His research interests are primarily centred on African philosophy, especially in the domain of African epistemology and the history of ideas. His other related academic interests are in the broad field of the Humanities and the application of its multi-disciplinary approach to pedagogy and theorisation in the African context, Comparative philosophy and African history. His current Master’s thesis research will seek to apply a critical conceptual analysis of Boaventura de Sousa Santos’s conceptual neologism, ‘Epistemicide’. Furthermore, his thesis will analyse this epistemic concept’s philosophic validity and applicability to a proposed set of phenomena which it has been often assumed to entail. Out of this investigation, he will develop a criteria that will seek to consistently designate actual instances of ‘Epistemicide’, as well as propose an alternative epistemic account against the epistemic harm that ‘Epistemicide’ will purportedly occasion for philosophy as a whole.