All Knowledge is first of all Local Knowledge: An Introduction.

Against a monolithic view of knowledge production and the tendency to universalize science, this article calls attention to the unique genius and distinctive creativity and originality which underline production of knowledge in any given cultural context. It takes seriously, the fact that, at its roots, knowledge production is context bound. Hence the authors emphasize the fact that all knowledge is first of all local knowledge. From this fundamental understanding of the true wellsprings of the production of knowledge, it argues against a mythic veil, which reformist modernity, especially, tended to place on the process of producing and transmitting knowledge. This deceptive myth about knowledge production, it opines, has had the negative impact of stereotyping, blackmailing, inferiorizing and derailing the production and sharing of knowledge and its artifacts in cultures other than the West. The colonial encounter, with its assumptions and presumptions, helped to rub in this vision of reformist modernity and to muffle the voices of colonised cultures. Hence such labels as 'indigenous' knowledge. In recognition, therefore, of the creative and genuine originality latent in every culture, this article seeks to empower cultures to realise, work on and appropriate the riches embedded in their own local knowledge tracts and trajectories. This appropriation by cultures, of their own rich genius, is, for the authors, the gateway