Discoursing ‘democratic knowledge’ & knowledge production in North Africa

Abstract

North Africa (interchangeably used with the term ‘Maghrib’) has historically featured as a contributor to Euro-Med cultures and civilisations. Mesopotamia, Egypt and Phoenicia all at one point in time or another mediated processes of infusion, inclusion and diffusion of ‘learning’. The flow was not one-way. The ‘travel’ of ideas left lasting inscriptions on the region's cultural map. As North Africa enters its ‘democratic’ and ‘revolutionary’ moment, it is apposite to address the question of democratic knowledge and trans-democratic exchange. This question is noted by glaring omission in most accounts of the Maghrib since the eruption of the 2011 uprisings. This moment registers continuity as much as rupture. It is a moment opportune for a break, encouraging the unshackling of the region from postcolonial histories of tutelage from without. Yet, at the same time, it renews the ethos of exchange, concomitantly unmaking North Africa as a space of ‘exile’, ‘exception’ and ‘otherness’ and remaking it as a shared space of democratising ferment, as subalterns seek renewal and self-conception through ‘democratic knowledge’.