The Discomfort around Knowledge Authority – Multiple Feminist Readings of Minna Salami’s Sensuous Knowledge

This collective review offers a layered feminist engagement with Minna Salami’s Sensuous Knowledge (2020), a text that ambitiously attempts to reframe epistemological authority from a diasporic African feminist standpoint. Prompted by the discomfort of a young African feminist scholar who declined to author a conventional review due to multiple concerns, the editors of this Feminist Africa issue decided to write a joint reflection piece. Drawing from contrasting positions—continental, diasporic, and European— the authors interrogate the book’s conceptual contributions, including its poetic method, its critique of “Europatriarchal Knowledge,” and its centring of Yoruba (and other African) knowledge systems. The review explores the friction between Salami’s call for epistemic liberation and her frequent returns to Western philosophical frameworks and raises questions about the limits of epistemic liberation using “the master’s tools.” While acknowledging the book’s shortcomings, the reviewers ultimately acknowledge its value as a provocatively accessible text that contributes to ongoing conversations within African feminist discourse. The review also reflects on the need for a critical space where emerging scholars feel empowered to engage with influential work, even—and especially—when they remain unconvinced by such scholarship.