{{Short description|Destruction of knowledge systems}} '''Epistemicide''' is the destruction of knowledge systems, where ''episteme'' means knowledge. Epistemicide has been a part of colonialism, in which a coloniser destroys the existing knowledge systems of the colonised, to replace them with knowledge systems controlled by the coloniser.<ref name=":1" /><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Comber |first1=Rob |last2=Järdemar |first2=Cecilia |last3=Tsimba |first3=Freddy |last4=Campo Woytuk |first4=Nadia |last5=Murdeshwar |first5=Akshata |last6=Lunyanga |first6=Serge |chapter=Designing with Decolonial Intent: Towards a Decolonial Archive in Resistance to Epistemicide |date=2025-07-05 |title=Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference |chapter-url=https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3715336.3735739 |language=en |location=Madeira Portugal |publisher=ACM |pages=884–898 |doi=10.1145/3715336.3735739 |isbn=979-8-4007-1485-6}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Van Milders |first=Lucas |url=https://doi.org/10.5771/9781538171936 |title=Unthinking Epistemicide |date=2024 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield Publishers |doi=10.5771/9781538171936 |isbn=978-1-5381-7193-6}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Bennett |first=Karen |date=November 2007 |title=Epistemicide!: The Tale of a Predatory Discourse |url=http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13556509.2007.10799236 |journal=The Translator |language=en |volume=13 |issue=2 |pages=151–169 |doi=10.1080/13556509.2007.10799236 |issn=1355-6509 |archive-date=2022-01-21 |access-date=2026-02-12 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220121001056/https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13556509.2007.10799236 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Hall |first1=Budd L. |last2=Tandon |first2=Rajesh |date=2017 |title=Decolonization of knowledge, epistemicide, participatory research and higher education |url=https://journals.uclpress.co.uk/r4a/article/id/2278/ |journal=Research for All |language=en |volume=1 |issue=1 |doi=10.18546/RFA.01.1.02 |issn=2399-8121}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Masaka |first=Dennis |date=April 2018 |title=The Prospects of Ending Epistemicide in Africa: Some Thoughts |url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0021934717753731 |journal=Journal of Black Studies |language=en |volume=49 |issue=3 |pages=284–301 |doi=10.1177/0021934717753731 |issn=0021-9347}}</ref><ref>{{Citation |last=Phiri |first=Madalitso Z. |title=The Ideology of Epistemicide |date=2024-01-05 |work=Monuments and Memory in Africa |pages=12–36 |url=https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003432876-2 |access-date=2026-02-12 |place=London |publisher=Routledge |doi=10.4324/9781003432876-2 |isbn=978-1-003-43287-6}}</ref><ref name=":2" /><ref name=":0" /> It is closely related to epistemic injustice. Cognitive justice seeks to challenge epistemicide.
The concept was developed by Boaventura de Sousa Santos in his 1998 ''La Globalización del derecho: los nuevos caminos de la regulación y la emancipación.''<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal |last1=Gonçalves |first1=Robson de Andrade |last2=Mucheroni |first2=Marcos L. |date=2021-11-30 |title=O que é epistemicídio? Uma introdução ao conceito para a área da Ciência da Informação |journal=Liinc em Revista |volume=17 |issue=2 |article-number=e5759 |doi=10.18617/liinc.v17i2.5759 |issn=1808-3536}}</ref>
Ramón Grosfoguel has argued that epistemicide was an important part of European colonialism around the world—including in the Americas—whereby European philosophy had an "epistemic privelege" at the expense of other knowledge systems, becoming a "new foundation of knowledge in the modern/colonial world."<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":2">{{Citation |last=Grosfoguel |first=Ramón |title=Epistemic Racism/Sexism, Westernized Universities and the Four Genocides/Epistemicides of the Long Sixteenth Century |date=2015 |work=Eurocentrism, Racism and Knowledge |pages=23–46 |editor-last=Araújo |editor-first=Marta |url=http://link.springer.com/10.1057/9781137292896_2 |access-date=2026-02-12 |place=London |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK |language=en |doi=10.1057/9781137292896_2 |isbn=978-1-349-45098-5 |editor2-last=Maeso |editor2-first=Silvia Rodríguez}}</ref>
The term has been used to describe Israel's destruction of Palestinian knowledge systems, including its attacks on schools and universities.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |title=The Epistemicide of the Palestinians: Israel Destroys Pillars of Knowledge |url=https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1655161 |access-date=2026-02-12 |website=Institute for Palestine Studies |language=en}}</ref> Rebecca Ruth Gould argues that "epistemicide exists in relation to genocide as scholasticide exists in relation to war: it attempts to erase not just educational institutions in their current state, but the very possibility of education in the future, in order to entirely erase the existence of a people from the Earth."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Gould |first=Rebecca Ruth |date=2025-09-13 |title=What does free speech have to do with Palestinian liberation? On resisting genocidal epistemicide |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01436597.2025.2547963 |journal=Third World Quarterly |language=en |pages=1–21 |doi=10.1080/01436597.2025.2547963 |issn=0143-6597}}</ref>
== References == {{Reflist}}
{{poli-stub}} Category:Colonialism Category:Concepts in epistemology Category:Cultural genocide Category:1990s neologisms