327 Chapter 14 “Drinking from the Cosmic Gourd” and the Fallacy of Completeness by Way of African Proverbs Jude Fokwang Introduction The illusion of completeness pervades almost every sector of our lives, from politics, religion, science, through romance to name just a few. Such ideas, whether academic theories, methodological techniques or ideologies are often well-packaged in the most glitzy, flamboyant and reassuring labels, exported from the headquarters of modernity and their satellite locations for global consumption by all and sundry. The concept of ready-made perhaps best captures these packaged ideas and theories; labels drawn from the language of my childhood insofar as sartorial issues were concerned. For fathers who wanted to be taken seriously in the 1970s and 1980s, shopping for ready-made clothes for one’s children and wive(s) was something many aspired to; it signalled one’s ability to consume and glorify one of the ultimate trappings of modernity – imported luxury clothes. The prestige accorded ready-made clothes contrasted sharply with those commissioned by the masses who relied on the community tailor or second-hand clothes discarded by consumers in the global north for recycling on the bodies of their less fortunate underlings in the global south. In this chapter, I provide a critical review of Francis Nyamnjoh’s Drinking from the Cosmic Gourd (2017), peppered with a variety of proverbs that sum up the imperative to incorporate African epistemologies and worldviews in theorising African experiences. Drinking from the Cosmic Gourd by Francis B. Nyamnjoh (2017) is a deeply infused treatise that aims to exorcise a hegemonic spell, occasioned by the ready-made epistemologies that have enthralled its consumers and reproducers since the colonial age. Such an exorcism, as most are wont to be, is a ritualistic affair, replete with incantations, repetitions and invocations – all aimed at reclaiming the mind and soul of the possessed. The cleansing agent in this expeditious