The History of Erasing Knowledge

We grow up believing that knowledge is cumulative. That it builds upon itself like a building, layer by layer, block by block. Each layer reaches ever closer to THE pinnacle. The lightning rod at the tippy top of said building. The question is: Is there an end? A pinnacle to reach?

Not just that, but what if the cathedral of knowledge we’re taught to look up to was built over the ruins of other, deliberately destroyed structures? Growing up in Mexico City, I saw a literal version of this with the cathedral in el Centro built over Aztec pyramids, which were, in turn, built on top of a lake. In my mind, these serve as a perfect analogy for entire systems of understanding. Some dismissed, flattened, or burned (!) because they came from the “wrong” people, the “wrong” places, or the “wrong” ways of thinking? And you know what… the cathedral is sinking. 

This is the first part of a four-part series about the story of epistemicide: the killing of knowledge *insert evil laugh*

What Exactly Is Epistemicide?

Sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos introduced the term epistemicide in the 1990s to describe the systematic devaluation of entire systems of knowledge. It’s more than an erasure through forgetting a passage of time. It is a purposeful erasure; it is aggressive. It happens through assimilation, ridicule, and institutional neglect. Epistemicide is particularly linked to colonization and its aftermath. It often cloaks itself under the veil of being a “civilizing” force for good. One that propels “backward” cultures forward.

Epistemicide can look different in different instances. It can look like Indigenous cosmologies being banned and replaced with missionary schooling. Women’s oral histories dismissed as superstition or gossip. It could be that African philosophies are excluded from university curricula. Or that non-Western sciences are deemed unscientific because they don’t use the “right” tools.

Epistemicide refers to the idea that there is only one valid way to know. It speaks Latin, quotes Aristotle, and wears a powdered wig. It aligns with the argument and ranking of high-brow and low-brow cultures. Epistemicide establishes a vertical hierarchy, proposing that there is only one possible culmination of true knowledge, which stems from a particular and exclusively valid background. It disregards any other forms of knowledge.

A History of Erasure

Colonialism and the Burning of Books

As I mentioned earlier, I grew up in Mexico City, a truly incredible place to grow up in. Like many other cities, you can see history layered one on top of another while stopping for a casual scoop of ice cream after school. Which brings me to the actual point… The Spanish conquest of the Americas. That is part of the history layer cake I experienced growing up. This conquest brought with it not only disease, swords, and crosses, but also fire. In 1562, Diego de Landa, a Spanish Franciscan priest, famously burned countless Mayan codices, describing them as “superstition and lies of the devil.” It is interesting to see the parallel between the strict vertical hierarchy adopted by Western Eurocentric hegemony and that of Judeo-Christian religious practices. The documents destroyed were mathematical, astronomical, and historical texts, invaluable. They were destroyed because they didn’t fit into the imposed Christian framework, as well as the idea that anything outside of European knowledge was “uncivilized”.

Similarly, during British colonization, vast amounts of Indian philosophical, scientific, and linguistic texts were lost or ignored. Systems like Ayurveda and Siddha medicine were treated as folk knowledge, despite having thousands of years of intellectual development behind them. The British did this many times, not just in India but in various countries in Africa, and obviously also here in North America, with Indigenous people and the millennia of knowledge and connection with tradition and nature they held. 

The Inquisition and the Silencing of Dissent

Not to keep drilling religiously motivated epistemicide, but we cannot leave out one of the most drastic examples of it. During the European Inquisitions, knowledge that didn’t align with Church doctrine was treated as heresy. The Gnostic gospels, alternative Christian texts, were buried or destroyed. The Library of Alexandria became a victim of successive waves of destruction. It symbolizes a larger pattern: knowledge erased to consolidate power. Even Islamic philosophy in Spain, flourishing under thinkers like Averroes (Ibn Rushd) and Avicenna (Ibn Sina), was purged during the Reconquista and its aftermath, making way for a homogenized European intellectual tradition. Not to mention the aggression toward knowledge passed down from woman to woman being labelled as witchcraft or, again,  heresy. One has to wonder… to what end? What is the actual purpose of curbing knowledge and cultural practices different from, in this case, the Catholic Church, but really from the dominant power? We have to take a moment to remember that although the Catholic Church during the first round of the inquisitions (the 12th century) was the entirety of the Christian Religion, during the more famous and subsequent inquisitions (The Roman and Spanish), it was, of course, dealing with the Protestant reformation. And so, while it was a religious organization, it was also a massively powerful political entity, under threat of a new wave of thought, at risk of losing its power and absolute influence. 

“…the penalties themselves were preventative not retributive, thought to spread an example by terror: “ ... quoniam punitio non refertur primo & per se in correctionem & bonum eius qui punitur, sed in bonum publicum ut alij terreantur, & a malis committendis avocentur (translation: “... for punishment does not take place primarily and per se for the correction and good of the person punished, but for the public good in order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils they would commit”).

–Cornell University Library Digital Collections Bookreader. Retrieved 4 March 2025.Eymeric-, Nicholas (1821). Manual de Inquisidores, para uso de las Inquisiciones de España y Portugal

The Rise of the “Universal” Knowledge

The Enlightenment overlapped with the last of the European Inquisitions, and with it came an explosion of inquiry, but also a narrowing of what counted as legitimate learning and thought. It is worth remembering that during the Enlightenment, the establishment still hunted for witches. In this case, the validity of knowledge or systems was not exclusively determined by religious foundations, but rather by the source of the knowledge. European philosophy and science were framed as “universal,” while other traditions were marked as “particular,” “cultural,” or “primitive.” This wasn’t by accident. It was a power move. Isn’t it always *eye roll*? As Michel Foucault later noted, knowledge and power are deeply entangled. Those in power don’t just write the laws; they shape what counts as truth.

Is the Enlightenment incredibly significant? Of course it is. Did it deal in a wide range of progressive ideas for the time? Absolutely. Is it worth looking at it critically? Also yes. This period gave us Galileo, Francis Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, John Locke, and so many more incredible thinkers. But again… powdered wig, etc. 

Not to detract from the contributions of the great thinkers of the Enlightenment, but a lot was pushed aside. Oral traditions, myths, rituals, folklore, and intuition, which had embodied knowledge and were often the core of non-Western ways of knowing, were dismissed. The results of disciplines that didn’t follow a systematic and repeatable method of inquiry (the foundations of modern science, I am not dismissing their value) were depreciated absolutely. It centered European modes of thought as universal (and dare we say, superior). Another significant shift was to move from polymathy and philomathy, which were the norm, to a singular mastery and separation of disciplines. It hindered cross-disciplinary thinking and interconnected views in the long term. 

The Enlightenment opened the door to reason, but locked out many other ways of understanding the world. It didn’t just lay the foundations for modern science; it redefined what counted as real knowledge, silencing whole cultures, disciplines, and perspectives in the process.

Who Gets to Be a Knower?

The myth of neutrality in knowledge production masks a long history of exclusion. For most of Western history, “the knower” has been imagined as a white, educated, European man. Women, Indigenous people, colonized communities, and the working class were seen as objects of study, not as contributors to knowledge.

Even when education became “universal,” the content was anything but neutral, as curricula were often constructed around dominant knowledge systems. Histories, philosophies, sciences, and arts from other cultures were either erased, distorted, or tokenized. Students were usually taught to memorize rather than think, to conform rather than question. Today, our schoolbooks quote Descartes, Kant, and Darwin, but rarely Zera Yacob, Confucius, Hypatia, or the Philomaths of Poland.

It’s not just about who gets left out or forgotten as leaders of thought. Although that’s pretty terrible in and of itself. It’s about who we’re taught to listen to, whose knowledge is deemed valuable. Who shapes our thinking? The foundation for our knowledge influences how we live in the world today, and it also shapes the world we continue to build, because the future is a creative act. The strategy isn’t just erasing knowledge, but replacing it with a single dominant worldview, often disguised as “universal truth.”

From the Enlightenment onward, and particularly through colonization, industrial schooling, and nation-building, education systems were designed to elevate some groups and exclude others. It created the fiction of the ignorant masses. In colonial systems, Indigenous, enslaved, and colonized peoples were often denied formal education altogether or taught in a way that erased their own history and knowledge systems. Girls and women were frequently educated only in domestic skills or moral instruction (although this is not entirely gone). Working-class children were taught obedience and basic literacy. They were taught enough to follow orders, but not enough to challenge them.

Education became a tool not specifically for learning, but for maintaining hierarchies. Only certain people got access to the kind of learning that leads to power, creativity, or self-determination. (Look at our post A Brief History of Education if you’re intrigued.)

Modern Consequences

Epistemicide creates a double wound; it keeps people away from heritage, tools, and diverse ways of knowing. And we also end up with a narrower version of the truth and a weakened ability to imagine alternative ways of being. This isn’t just a historical injustice. It has lasting effects that influence education, where standardized curricula erase cultural diversity. Media, where certain viewpoints are framed as fringe or irrational. Academia, where non-Western methodologies are still often dismissed, tokenized, or ignored. This narrowing of knowledge harms everyone. It limits our imagination, our empathy, and our ability to solve problems from different angles.

In culture, epistemicide manifests through the formation of canons. Deciding which authors, musicians, artists, and thinkers are “classics”, and which are “niche” or “folk” or “outside the mainstream.” Museums and cultural institutions that showcase artifacts from colonized peoples while rarely including their voices or contextualizing the violence of how those objects were taken. Pop culture frames most things through dominant narratives. Stories from outside that framework get sanitized, sidelined, or sold back as “exotic” or “inspirational.”

What this does is teach us to devalue our own cultural heritage if it doesn’t fit the dominant mold. It flattens identity and imagination. And it makes it harder for diverse cultures to see themselves as sources of deep, legitimate knowledge.

In politics, we see it in policy-making that ignores lived experience and prioritizes abstract “data-driven” solutions. Especially when those data sets are biased or incomplete. Global development agendas that impose Western solutions on non-Western problems often erase local, sustainable practices in favor of industrialized systems. It creates laws and systems built on partial truths. It silences dissent by declaring it “nonfactual” or “unpatriotic.” It makes it hard to imagine alternatives, because alternative knowledge systems have already been written off.

It leads to censorship, through book bans, curriculum restrictions, and public backlash against teaching histories of oppression, colonialism, or alternative worldviews. These aren’t neutral acts; they are attempts to protect the dominant narrative by erasing what threatens it. Censorship is epistemicide in real time.

Obviously, epistemicide devalues knowledge; today, it has led to a downgrade of the Humanities through budget cuts to art, music, literature, philosophy, and history. The rise of “career-ready” education that sidelines critical thinking in favor of “skills training.” Education today ends up framing the humanities as indulgent or impractical. But we know that the humanities hold memory, foster empathy, and help us ask better questions, all essential for resisting epistemicide. Damaging knowledge doesn’t just impact certain kinds of knowledge; it ultimately harms learning as a whole. The damage to learning becomes a growing issue, as it eventually devalues the perception of what knowledge can achieve. 

What can we do?

Recognizing epistemicide is the first step toward intellectual self-defense. Because before we can think critically, we need to ask: Whose knowledge have we been taught to value? And whose have we been taught to ignore?

We can try to reclaim erased knowledge. To highlight voices and systems that have been ignored, distorted, or buried. We must redefine what counts as learning, this means to honor oral traditions, community knowledge, and intuitive practices alongside formal education. And we must resist epistemicide in our homes, classrooms, and media. We can choose stories, lessons, and art that challenge the dominant narrative and make space for complexity.

What It Means for Us

Super Genius Society was born, in part, as a rebellion against this kind of erasure and mischaracterization of learning. By recognizing, discussing, and creating an accessible entry point to important aspects of dominant knowledge, and also reintroducing sidelined thinkers, artists, and creators. I feel we aren’t just “adding diversity,” but helping to shore up learning in our own small way. We’re assisting in a small way in renovating that sinking cathedral.

Coming Next:

Epistemicide Part 2: The Classroom as a Battleground

How modern education reinforces epistemicide, and how to subvert it.

Further Reading & References

• Boaventura de Sousa Santos – Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide

• Walter Mignolo – The Darker Side of Western Modernity

• Silvia Federici – Caliban and the Witch

• Linda Tuhiwai Smith – Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples

• John Taylor Gatto – Dumbing Us Down

• Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o – Decolonising the Mind

• Robin Wall Kimmerer – Braiding Sweetgrass

• Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writing

• Diego de Landa’s destruction of Mayan codices, documented in Relación de las cosas de Yucatán

• Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed