Sensuous Knowledge

'For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.' Taking Audre Lorde's influential essay The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master's House as a central inspiration, Minna Salami explores what Audre Lorde raised, but never answered: If not the master's tools, then what Sensuous Knowledge is her attempt to provide a new 'toolkit' for challenging the status quo that is at once empowering, transcendental and practical. Combining the playfulness of a storyteller with the interrogating gaze of a social critic, the book pries open and questions systems of imperialist, patriarchal power that have dominated cultures and ways of thinking for centuries, and puts forward a new approach to knowledge. As Salami herself puts it: 'I realised that to change society, one must first change oneself. But to change myself, I did not merely need new knowledge; I needed a new understanding of knowledge.' Drawing on a range of traditions, including personal narrative, feminist theory, popular culture, philosophy and African myth, Sensuous Knowledge offers a bold, Africa-centred and feminist vision of hope for a world in crisis, and shatters our illusions around gender, race and power.