ABSTRACT
A contestation of African indigenous knowledge began with the arrival of the missionaries in the late nineteenth century. Indigenous knowledge expressed in African healthcare systems came under particular assault by the “colonial matrix of power,” leading to the subjectification of black bodies under the clinical gaze. The essay argues that the COVID-19 emergency has brought to the fore the ever-persisting debate on the “coloniality” of knowledge performed by Western medical expressions, while alternatively raising the importance of the pluriversality of knowledge. Additionally, despite the persistence of missionary/colonial/Western clinical gazes and claims of epistemic privilege, indigenous people continue to subvert such claims by legitimizing indigenous health practices.
