Oral tradition substitutes for writing as the epistemic guarantee of elder wisdom

Evidence

The truth that natural thinkers talk about is their very evidence of lived life. It is the very life of the people. Such popular knowledge is considered to delivered from God, thought of now as Omniscience. The evidence of life combined with popular knowledge is what gives credibility and confers dignity to the elderly. The teachings of the elders generally take place through proverbs (words of life – wisdom and teachings on morality), which are considered to be entries in a dictionary. The elder is the dictionary of traditional African culture. In the absence of writing, the guarantee of the speculative value of natural thinkers is, therefore, the traditions, myths, rites and habits handed down orally. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 320

Categorization

• XREF: The elder-as-dictionary idea resonates with the reader’s prior work on oral tradition as knowledge infrastructure; and the absent-writing claim parallels how literacy shapes what counts as knowledge. — connects to: An elder’s relational plant knowledge far exceeds botanists’ scientific depth — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 160; Liberatory theory must be produced and shared orally as well as in writing