»Knowledge begets knowledge, as knowledge starts; knowledge begets knowledge, as knowledge imparts; when the first white male, on whatever trail, first pissed his name into the snow, raised the red flag, green flag, the buckler of blue, drew up maps, took notes on the strand, spread new diseases, settled the land, in twenty-four volumes got everything classified, in ninety-four countries got everyone racified, in subcategories, sub-subcategories, in squares, in boxes, beasts and barbarians, in measurable processes, by skin and hair, tooth and nose, how the tongue curves in the wind at a hundred degrees – knowledge, dried-up butterflies.« Philipp Khabo Köpsell, 2010
KNOWLEDGE
The scientists and explorers who set out to discover the white spaces on their maps, and to fill their white world with knowledge, were the pioneers of colonial conquest. Wherever they landed, they charted, categorized, sorted and defined and thus produced a body of knowledge about the world that served as the foundation for the subjugation and utilization of entire regions and their inhabitants.
In the name of science, however, not only landscapes, flora and fauna were catalogued, but also people. Like animals, plants and objects, they were collected, measured and carried off to Europe as menagerie displays, where they were at the mercy of popular curiosity as well as of the urge of scientists to study and pigeonhole them in a racist world- view. Thus researched, they became the »others,« the subordinates, demonstrating the supposed supremacy of the white Europeans.
Although the one-dimensionality, arbitrariness and brutality of colonial knowledge gathering has been increasingly called into question, and countered by competing and decolonizing modes of study, it shapes the way knowledge is produced, managed and disseminated to this day. The questions posed by post-colonial theoreticians about the derivation of knowledge, and the influence of power on bodies of knowledge, are thus still virulent. What is this knowledge that we still refer to? Where does it come from, how did it come about? Who are we listening to? Which perspectives are we not hearing? And who is »we«?