Ignoring the Obvious About the World

This essay takes up four kinds of “not knowing” that have been central to knowledge-making in African Studies. I chose ignorance and African history to open a dialogue with the other authors in this issue. The essay deals with therapeutic non-systems, cultural ignorance, disappearing knowledge, and sovereign forms of community care. It uses a now-classic article by Murray Last, on the health-seeking practices of Hausa speakers in northern Nigeria in the 1960s and 1970s, as its anchor. Embedded in the essay is a tacit question about the history of anarchic modes of collective organization in places under-served by states.