As a science decolonization writer and overcomer of modern Western science-induced trauma, Dr. Linda Bonga Bouna (Yandi/She/Her) challenges institutional silence around colonial violence embedded in Western epistemology on her blog Reappearance. Her strength lies in rehumanizing knowledge through storytelling, particularly from African, Indian, and diasporic perspectives, while decentering European rationality. She helps health equity professionals deepen structural awareness, rethink “evidence” hierarchies, and build more just, culturally grounded approaches to medical science and healing. Dr. Linda Bonga Bouna brings a rare, vital perspective that bridges regulatory science, decolonial theory, and narrative healing.
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the interviewee, not the interviewee’s employer, organization, committee, or other group or individual.
R: I reached out to you for this interview after reading some of your captivating blog posts on your blog “Reappearance”, a platform you use to write on ‘decolonizing science and medicine’. You describe how you use Reappearance to create a space for storytelling. How do you see the connection between science and storytelling?
L: I have an academic background in pharmaceutical sciences, but have studied the humanities in my own time. Most of my enlightened knowledge of the humanities comes from oral storytelling. Stories are something uniquely distinct to us humans… as they are what makes us different from most animals. Stories help us to shape and express our reality, our narratives.
The modern Western scientific narrative is strongly linked to colonization, and its correlated misconceptions on universality and objectivity. So for me, writing from a different perspective is a way to reclaim this narrative, and to rehumanize the ‘story’ of Western science. It’s important to remember that what we call modern Western science, or Science with a capital S, for its supposed ‘universality’, is grounded in European culture. In a certain aspect, it’s a local science that has been universalized through colonization. That’s why, as humanity, we should give ourselves the permission to also think differently. We can dare to look at ‘facts’ in a different context.
Doing that is neither right nor wrong: it’s just what it is.
I like to use writing as an act of self-empowerment. I’m always very careful about the words that I use, and especially the way I write. I try to write in an empathic way, including when I write about monocultural European descendants (also referred to as white people). I try to use compassionate writing to re-empower everyone by re-exploring the notion of the ‘universal truth’, an idea deeply rooted in European colonization.
R: In your blog post titled ‘Colonial Amnesia and the Psychology of Healing: A Call for Institutional Courage.’ you wrote the following:
“This is not about guilt; it is about grace. Grace to confront hard truths. Grace to grow. Grace to recognize that decolonization is not a threat to heritage but a rebirth of collective dignity.”
I think that captures really well how you, as a storyteller, frame we should choose a more empathetic approach. Can you tell me more about this?
L: This compassionate approach echoes deeply in my African Kongo philosophy. It’s so-called Bantu culture that embraces Ubuntu: It acknowledges interdependence, shared values, interconnections, and thinks in networks and ecosystems. The connection with each other is what makes us human.
This translates into my work. That’s why my writing is not linear: relational thinking isn’t linear. I still include a certain linearity, as Western thinking does, because I want to make sure monocultural European descendants understand my work too. Still, unlike most scientific narratives, mine doesn’t revolve around their position and their sciences (Eurocentricity) but humanity in general.
R: Is your writing situated in a mission for epistemological justice? What is the goal of your blog?
L: The blog helps me to reach people who are curious about human-centred medical science and decolonizing knowledge. I also created a mental health guide on how to survive institutional gaslighting* and reclaim our reality. It’s based on one of my experiences in which a museum erased an early 20th-century human zoo from its curation. I transformed the correspondence I had with this institution in a study case expanding from curation (heritage conversation) to care (health systems) (read article here).
*Institutional gaslighting: a form of emotional abuse based in the psychological manipulation of a person, which makes them question their reality, rooted in power dynamics at an institutional level. (Kennedy-Cuomo, 2019).
R: You’re from a pharmaceutical background, but at the same time you are also really interested in humanities. From what I understood of your blog, it is more centered around art and cultural practices. Why and how are you combining these two different backgrounds?
L: I don’t see science and art as different things. They are deeply interlinked in what I do. Culture influences science and the other way around. I try to unveil the culture of Western science from the perception of all of humanity, not just the West.
We need to create an accessible, public-led space to talk about how modern Western science influences humanity. This critical conversation should not be limited to academia (philosophy of science) and applied sciences (pharmaceutical industry and medical practice). As a scientist, I work in an artificial environment, far away from the human experience. Still, we need to ensure patients’ reality isn’t erased and assimilated into Western science in the process, as European culture did with humanity during colonization. Patient-centric, and human-centric, means science revolves around human reality, and human reality happens outside the labs. So as scientists we also need to reach humanity where it is and respect its reality.
R: Science has become something that’s very detached from actual practice of reality and people. In my spaces, I feel like there is a rise in the questioning of the meaning of ‘science’. I see an increased questioning of these rigid academic methodologies, article publishing processes. If we open the interpretations of our now strictly defined ‘science’ , there is more space to question for example ‘who’s allowed to be a global health practitioner’. It’s important to create a certain level of self reflection, and encourage people to see the reality of what is behind science.
You also wrote that you are trying to help health equity professionals to build more just and culturally grounded approaches to healing. Is self reflection part of that? Are there other elements to that as well?
L: I think this detachment reflects what modern Western science has always been. Historically, it objectified reality- including humans. In the 19th-century, scientists believed science was truly objective, because they had developed methodologies that perceived humans as objects. Today, there’s a kind of collective amnesia about this history. It is important to articulate how Western science has shaped and traumatized our past, using today’s awareness- much like how one might revisit and question individual traumas in therapy. I try to do that in my writing, because people often resonate more with meaningful words than cold data.
Storytelling can act like a collective therapeutic tool, helping us realise what is dysfunctional in modern Western science.
And once we do, and uncover its foundations- the notions of supreme objectivity and universality- and we learn to understand how humanity has been subjected to its influence.
R: In your work, you also hope to address the mental health of non-European descendants living in the West, bridging culture and science. What is your definition of mental health? Especially because the hegemonic definition of ‘mental health’ also stems from a Western-dominated, imperial conceptualization. So I was just curious to hear, how do you define that yourself?
L: Mental health to me is a continuum, and a balance that exists within an individual and their community and environment. Once this balance is disturbed, we encounter challenges. That’s how I define it. As you can see, I use a broader definition of ‘mental health’, compared to the Western hegemonic definition, in which it is only about the individual and their well-being.
African or Asian mental health professionals come from different cultural backgrounds. Whenever they use Western sciences, they need to adapt their practice according to their cultural backgrounds. There are also challenges the other way around. If you try to apply Western conceptions of mental health to culturally diverse individuals, it can be harmful. Most Western mental health professionals have not decolonized their perception, because Western-based mental health science still dominates. So, when individuals from the non-Western world living in the European descendants’ reality need mental health support, it can be scary. We don’t know the quality of care we will get, unless we are at one of the few culturally competent practices. Outside those, it’s like rolling a dice with our mental health treatment.
R: I know there has been a big movement, after the Black Lives Matter protests, to try and tackle institutional racism across all types of institutions. This does not only mean naming it institutional racism, but also taking actual action and providing training.
L: Well, training is like a Band-Aid. You also need to dismantle the system that enables discrimination. Discrimination is a part of Western logic, especially in science. How easily can Western culture stop discriminating when it’s fundamental to its thought? Those are hard questions I put to light as a science decolonization writer.
R: It is a call for wider systemic change, rooted in community and allyship. We have to come together and recognize what is wrong, and we have to change the agenda that way. However, I think I’m just growing quite impatient sometimes. I am sad to see how difficult it is. How is that for you? How do you deal with the emotions of this kind of work?
L: There are a lot of emotions that I go through, like anger and frustration, and also, gratefulness and happiness. It is a rainbow of emotions. From an individual perspective, I try not to hold on to any of those too much. I let them be, as per my Dharmic Indian culture. Meanwhile, from an African perspective, the sense of community and belonging and collective emotional experience is so important. I also have outlets where I can express these emotions to make sense of them collectively as well.
In Western culture, strong emotions, especially sad ones, are repressed. Especially among scientists this is the expectation, for the sake of an illusory objectivity.
I can imagine how challenging it can be to exist in this individualistic culture and go through all these challenging emotions. You cannot express them because it’s not good to express too many emotions as per Western standard, and it is culturally preferred to keep them to yourself. European colonization tried to impose this emotionally stunted culture onto humanity. But the Global Decolonization movement has resisted this dysfunction, even when European culture became part of our identity. We say no because it’s harmful for our mental health. And so can you.
R: Emotions do not only come with one’s present, but also realising one’s past. I’m from the Netherlands, and had a lot of emotional reflections about my colonial past. Though we are apologetic about our slavery past, we still speak of it as the “Golden Age”, a period of wealth and prosperity.
In your article on collective amnesia in history museums, you call to reimagine archives not as relics, but living dialogues. Could you expand?
L: We need a collective approach about how we curate the past. For the moment, there is still a lot of denial and minimization of colonial abuse and colonial trauma.
When we deny this abuse and trauma, what are we denying and why? What and who are we protecting?
Colonization was a totalitarian project. It had a narcissistic-like dynamic, like all totalitarian realities. It was led by a small group of very privileged European descendants who went all over the world and decided to transform that world into their distorted, grandiose image. If we dare to see this from a healing perspective, this is narcissism, and we are trying to overcome a sort of institutionalized narcissistic abuse. Concepts like White supremacy fit well in this frame.
When we look at the history of Europe, colonization happened in a time of traumatic disasters in Europe. There were long wars and many famines in the 14th/15th century. Europe’s population and resources were dwindling. Monarchies needed new territories to survive, and they felt entitled to kill Indigenous peoples who opposed their life-saving enterprises. They brutally assimilate the survivors to increase their dwindling populations. This script is deeply embedded in the colonization narrative, even if it’s hidden by collective amnesia today.
In decolonization studies, we often use the ‘narcissism’ frame to understand European colonization. In this context, the notion of the “Golden Age” can be seen in the lens of a grandiose narcissistic delusion, like in any totalitarian system.
This colonial grandiose delusion linked to a hidden script of survival is a part of Western culture and its sense of identity. In this perspective, addressing this delusion threatens the perceived cultural identity, integrity, and survival. I think why it’s so challenging to shatter.
So with my work, I’m trying to do what museums don’t do enough: remember from a healing perspective, instead of showcasing the past and inadvertently sustaining the delusion of monocultural European descendants and the trauma for most humans.
R: That reminds me of the coin model of privilege from Nixon (2019). This model describes the system of inequality as a two-sided coin with the following two-way division: the top is the privileged, the people benefitting from inequality, and at the bottom are the disadvantaged, the people suffering from inequality. Often, people who are speaking up a lot against colonialism or imperialism are the ones who are also oppressed through these systems, and at the bottom of the coin of privilege. The reason why, for example, monocultural European descendants are less incentivized to do so, is because they still benefit from the current hierarchies. We always talk a lot about the suffering of the oppressed, but we don’t really talk about the benefits of the advantaged/privileged. Perhaps that is also why there is a normalisation of delay for radical change, and why monocultural European descendants are taking such little action to engage or even dismantle these systems.
L: I’m always quite wary of talking about privileges. I prefer to see privilege through an intersectional lens and focus on ‘comfort zone’ instead.
At the end of the day, people don’t want to change because they feel comfortable. Privilege gives you a certain level of comfort, even in your pain. During colonization, humanity’s reality revolved around European elites, so that they felt comfortable. Later, democratization promised that the people would have the same comfort as the elites, but this comfort comes from privilege over the rest of humanity. So when we articulate white privilege in the context of comfort, we can see how antagonistic it is with the notion of change, progress, and innovation because no one grows and evolves by staying in their comfort zone. Then the conversations start to change. Comfort is a position; we can change it. Meanwhile, we cannot change our privilege.
R: I really like that perspective. You are in a comfortable position. But you can move from one position to another. From a position of comfort to a position of discomfort.
L: Privilege is what it is: an advantage over others. I also have a privilege. I was born with a lot of intellectual capacity that my parents fostered.
My parents were not well-off, but educated people compared to the rest of the immigrant community in France. So that’s something that my parents often told me: “Even if it’s hard for us, remember that you’re privileged in a dimension you might not see. Look at who we are. I’m an architect. Your mother is a heritage curator. Even if we’re struggling with finding jobs because of racial discrimination, we are still in a better position than those immigrants who are not educated in the Western system.” We can help people who are in worse situations than us. Then, they can help others who are worse off than they are, and so on. It’s a privilege to be able to help and advance the community. Meanwhile, in the West, it’s a privilege to be able to help and advance yourself.
R: For people reading this who are newly introduced to this analogy of the comfort zone, do you maybe have some examples of what stepping out could look like to visualize it more?
L: The first step is to foster your curiosity. Without curiosity, it will be difficult to challenge yourself to get out of your comfort zone. Initially, you can place yourself in a situation where you still feel safe, but where you’re not used to being. For example, as scientists, we might not know or read about other types of science, we might want to take a book and see how other cultures are thinking about science, medicine, or mental health.
After we have trained this curiosity muscle, and we engage in new spaces, it is important not to judge. It is very easy to judge other cultures, for example, their non-Western approach to medicine. Instead, I encourage to try to find what resonates and what does not, and why. It’s easy to speak of others’, but first feelings of discomfort arrive when we look at ourselves in the mirror. The different perceptions of science and medicine are where the discomfort comes from.
By doing this exercise- challenging the comfort zone-, we can start to extend it, and this is how we grow. Stepping outside of our comfort zone is internal growth. Through connections with other cultures, we can learn more about ourselves. We can learn more about what we are doing within Western science, and as scientists and individuals, and more importantly, how this affects others.
Lastly, we need to have self-compassion because it is a challenging exercise, and like any transformative exercise, it cannot be something that can be pushed, but something that we need to respect at our own rhythm.
In the meantime, it is important to have enough intellectual humility when engaging in this exercise. Others might already have progressed and transformed, and if we are a newer practitioner of decolonial thought (especially if we are based in the West), we should not slow others down. It’s a question of power; the West sets the tone and agenda for medical sciences, leaving the rest of the world co-dependent on Western transformation. This co-dependency is a bitter aftertaste of the old colonial legacies. We should allow space for interdependency, where the West and its scientists work on themselves, while empowering the rest of humanity. This can only be done through actively practicing intellectual humility.
Visiting Reappearance is a way to be introduced to a new space, and explore medical and pharmaceutical science in a decolonial light. Since most humans are based in the non-West, it is important to understand the different realities and conceptualisations of science, (mental) health, and wellbeing.
Note of author: If you are interested in exploring more about challenging your comfort zone, Dr. Linda Bonga Bouna has shared a 5-piece series on ‘Unlearning’. This helpful series allows you to challenge yourself with unlearning Western-centric scripts embedded in medical science and healthcare. It invites us to imagine new human-centric and patient-empowered ways to do scientific and medical innovation.
References
Kennedy Cuomo (2019). Institutional Gaslighting: Investigations to Silence the Victim and Protect the Perp. Brown Political View. Retrieved 15th of August 2025, https://brownpoliticalreview.org/institutional-gaslighting-investigations-vane-silence-victim-protect-perp/
Nixon, S.A. The coin model of privilege and critical allyship: implications for health. BMC Public Health 19, 1637 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-7884-9
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