An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Diran Soumonni (African Fellow, 2023-24)
‘Our Tradition is Very Modern’: Re-membering African-Scottish Scientific Exchanges (1850 – 1900) through Transepistemic Innovation.
The apparently paradoxical quote in the title of this talk is attributed to some West African artists who attempted to interpret a concept from their mother tongue for English-speaking interlocutors. Ironically, it also offers a rebuttal to the misleading trope about a bifurcation between African ‘traditional’ knowledge and ‘modern’ sciences that often minimises Africa’s contribution to contemporary science, technology and innovation. For instance, in addition to the historical record, more recent responses to the COVID-19 pandemic simultaneously featured the decipherment of two major strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (in South Africa), and inclusive pharmaceutical innovation by a variety of knowledge holders. All these efforts constitute domestically directed or ‘endogenous’ innovation. Using biomedical innovation as an exemplar, I investigate the manner in which fruitful attempts to reconcile a plurality of epistemological paradigms and ‘grammars of science’ were made by medical scientists travelling between Scotland and Africa in the latter half of the 19th century. In that respect, I examine some of the textual evidence of that period produced by West and Southern African students studying medicine in Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh. I concurrently review that published by students and professionals from Scotland who documented medical practices in various parts of Africa. Lastly, joint reflections with current students and researchers in medicine (and overlapping disciplines) at The University of Edinburgh will inform the present-day implications of an analogous exercise for ‘transepistemic’ innovation, both within ‘Global Africa’ and in collaboration with other mutually intersecting societies, namely, Scotland.
Please join in-person, or click the link below to join the webinar:
https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/81857401179
Passcode: 6aSe7GF7