Conceptual Narratives of Knowledge Translation and Epistemicide

This chapter explores the interplay of translation and epistemicide. Baker’s narrative approach to translation provides a descriptive meta-language. By employing Baker’s concepts, the chapter examines the tension between two conceptual narratives in the history of science: one that views science as a progressive journey towards modernity beginning with the scientific revolution, and another that perceives scientific modernity as a force that eradicates traditional and Indigenous knowledge systems. This tension is fundamental to the canonical formulations of epistemicide. The chapter relates the literature on epistemicide to the turn towards go-betweens, translation, and hybridity in the cultural history of science, and examines how Indigenous health knowledge was inscribed in a WHO report dealing with how cultural contexts influence the knowledge translation (KT) process. The chapter contends that the conceptual narratives underpinning the historiography of science also influence medical KT, and the construal of the relation between Indigenous medical systems and biomedicine. To understand KT in the asymmetrical power contexts where this relationship operates, it is claimed, concepts of knowledge exchange and epistemicide that transcend clear-cut binaries between cultures, time periods, and systems of knowledge are needed.