In this essay I bring Gregory Bateson together with Deleuze and Guattari (primarily with the latter) to show their ecological compatibility, especially with Guattari’s ecosophy. I do this against the backdrop of the Anthropocene which presents us not only with a ‘climate’ of post-truth and political corruption, but also with the so-called climate crisis. In the context of these two broad examinations, I ask what can an artisan-artist-designer do given this problematic context? My reply is to call on ‘speculative design’ (...) by an ‘avant-garde without authority’ to expose the symptoms of the Anthropocene era. (shrink)

This paper argues that the current discourse on epistemic injustice in social epistemology itself perpetuates epistemic injustice, namely hermeneutic injustice with regards to class and classism. The main reason is that debates on epistemic injustice have foremost focussed on issues related to gender, race, and disability while mostly ignoring class issues. I suggest that this is due to (largely unwarranted) fears about looming class reductionism. More importantly, this is omission is not innocuous, but problematic insofar as it has an unlikely (...) ally in neoliberal propaganda which features as one main goal stifling class consciousness. While this “allyship” is unwitting, this presents grounds for the discourse of epistemic injustice to consider re-centring class issues and classism. (shrink)

In this article we develop a taxonomy of emotional injustice: what occurs when the treatment of emotions is unjust, or emotions are used to treat people unjustly. After providing an overview of previous work on this topic and drawing inspiration from the more developed area of epistemic injustice, we propose working definitions of ‘emotion’, ‘injustice’, and ‘emotional injustice’. We describe seven classes of emotional injustice: Emotion Misinterpretation, Discounting, Extraction, Policing, Exploitation, Inequality, and Weaponizing. We say why it is useful to (...) distinguish these and also to subsume them under a single concept. Our aims are both theoretical and practical: to provide a unified account of emotional injustice, while recognizing the diversity of this phenomenon; to facilitate further research on this topic; to recognize the political importance of emotions; and to outline some of the ways in which emotional injustice can be combated. (shrink)

Through enacting what she refers to as “a postmodernism of resistance,” bell hooks works out and works through a methodology of transgressive thought, through a radical rhetoric of feminist ideology. When mouthed, this radical rhetoric is significantly inaugurated in part by the well-known text, Ain’t I A Woman, but is also launched in particular ways by hooks’ lesser-known 1983 dissertation on Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Sula. What becomes integral to hooks’ transgressive thought is a critique of how black (...) womanhood attends to keeping a hold on life, transgressively confronting the interdisciplinarity of white-supremacist, capitalist patriarchy. (shrink)

Larawan ng isang lipunan ang pagkakaroon ng mga museo bilang lagakan o repositoryo hindi lamang ng mga kulturang materyal ngunit maging ng mga salaysaying-bayang nakakabit sa pambansang kasaysayan at pambansang kamalayan ng mga mamamayan nito. Gayumpaman, bukod sa naghahatid ito ng iba’t ibang anyo ng kaalaman, kung minsan ay nagiging aparato rin ng mga propagandang maaaring mag-angat o magsantabi sa isang partikular na pangkat. Dahil karamihan sa mga museo ay binuo sa panahong post-kolonyal, maaaring pagnilayan ang namamayaning naratibo, representasyon, at (...) pag-alala sa mga ito. Sa bawat museo, naitatanghal ba ang mga katutubo, kolonyal, o postkolonyal na kaisipan at pagpapakahulugan? Patas ba ang pakikisangkot ng bayan bilang nilalaman at bida ng mga museo, o tagatangkilik o tagamasid lamang sila sapagkat dinodomina na rin ito ng mga naghahari at makapangyarihang naratibo? Aambagan ng sanaysay na ito ang napapanahon at makabagong pagtingin sa museolohiyang kakawala sa naghaharing pananaw at pamantayan ng Kanluran—na kadalasa’y nagtanghal, walang humpay na nagbigay ng pagpapakahulugan, sa Silangan nitong mga nagdaang panahon. Bagaman hinugot at isinentro ito mula sa mga personal na paglalakbay, pagsusuruy-suroy, at obserbasyon ng may-akda sa mga museo nang siya’y maglakbay sa iba’t ibang bansa sa Asya-Pasipiko at Europa sa pagitan ng taong 2014 at huling bahagi ng 2019, naglatag naman ito ng ilang kritikal na pagsusuri at pagtingin tungkol sa (1) pagkakahati at nilalaman ng mga museong kanyang narating; (2) kalagayan ng mga artifact (sampu ng mga posibleng isyu rito); at (3) representasyon at layuning “isabansa” ang mga museo, na siyang maaaring ilapat din sa lipunang Pilipino. Liban pa rito, nilayon din ng sanaysay na ambagan ang umuusbong na Araling Kabanwahan—ang pag-aaral tungkol sa ugnayan/pag-uugnay-ugnay ng Pilipinas at ng mga ibang bayan sa labas nito na umaayon sa diwa, talastasan, at tunguhin ng pagka-Pilipino. (shrink)

This article proposes the comparison of two methods of analysis, semiotics, and hermeneutics, to address contemporary issues in ethical and political philosophy, through the study of the phenomenon of epistemic injustice. Conceptualized by Fricker (2007), epistemic injustice is synonymous with the denial of the value of knowledge that an individual possesses because of prejudices about the social group to which he or she belongs or is affiliated. When epistemic injustice is studied in the empirical world, it poses some crucial issues (...) in terms of interpreting the meaning that the individual gives to the experience of injustice that he or she experiences. Although the interpretation of injustice is central to the understanding of the phenomenon itself, little research in ethical and political philosophy addresses these aspects, because of the failure to sufficiently mobilize analytical methods such as semiotics and hermeneutics. However, these two methods, usually used in other fields to deal with these aspects, allow us to question the treatment and the interpretative scope of the epistemic injustice by the different interlocutors involved in the interaction in which it is reconducted. The comparison of these two methods in the analysis of epistemic injustice finally allows us to argue in favor of the hermeneutic method, as defined by Gadamer and rethought by Code (2003), to enhance Gadamer's legacy through the analysis of ethical and political issues in human sciences research. (shrink)

Sanctuary traditionally meant something different for humans and nonhuman animals, but this is changing. Animals are increasingly seen as subjects, and, similar to human sanctuaries, animal sanctuaries are increasingly understood as political spaces. In this article I compare human and nonhuman sanctuaries in order to bring into focus under- lying patterns of political inclusion and exclusion. By investigating parallels and differ- ences I also aim to shed light on the role of sanctuaries in thinking about and working towards new forms (...) of community and democratic interaction, focusing specifically on the role of political agency and voice. I begin by briefly discussing the political turn in animal philosophy, in which nonhuman animals are conceptualized as political actors. I then discuss ‘Zatopia’, a thought experiment that shows that viewing sanctuaries as separate from larger political structures runs the risk of repeating violence, and I investigate parallels with certain practices and policies in farmed animal sanctuaries. In order to overcome the obstacles thus identified, I turn to the concept ‘expanded sanctuary’, which explicitly focuses on connections between sanctuary and larger political structures. I discuss two examples of expanded sanctuary in which the agency and voices of those seeking or taking sanctuary are foregrounded: VINE Sanctuary, and the Dutch migrant collective WE ARE HERE. In the final section I briefly touch upon the consequences of these con- siderations for our understanding of sanctuary in relation to political membership and reforming communities. (shrink)

Technologies that deploy data science methods are liable to result in epistemic harms involving the diminution of individuals with respect to their standing as knowers or their credibility as sources of testimony. Not all harms of this kind are unjust but when they are we ought to try to prevent or correct them. Epistemically unjust harms will typically intersect with other more familiar and well-studied kinds of harm that result from the design, development, and use of data science technologies. However, (...) we argue that epistemic injustices can be distinguished conceptually from more familiar kinds of harm. We argue that epistemic harms are morally relevant even in cases where those who suffer them are unharmed in other ways. Via a series of examples from the criminal justice system, workplace hierarchies, and educational contexts we explain the kinds of epistemic injustice that can result from common uses of data science technologies. (shrink)

ABSTRACT As academics, we do not only produce and reproduce knowledge; we also produce our citizenship as a social and agonistic space. There are nuances embedded within academic citizenship – unqualifiable, but compelling in their production and reproduction of power dynamics, bringing into disrepute notions of academic citizenship as a homogenous or inclusive space. There are ways of being and becoming within citizenship that might be less readily conceivable, and hence, slip beneath the radar of scholarly scrutiny and debates.We have (...) yet to delve into how we come into the presence of one another. In offering an expanded understanding of academic citizenship as alterity, I argue that academic citizenship has to involve wading into a curious uncertainty about the other so that the immensity of diversity, its unknown-ness, is brought to bear on the university, not as fear and estrangement, but as a rupture with a continuity of Othering. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper explores the alarming phenomenon of violent extremism in university campuses. It probes why education fails to prevent violent extremism in this case? Drawing on Robert Cox’s distinction of problem solving and critical theories, the paper examines policy discourses that aim to prevent violent extremism through education. It is observed that dominant policy discourses take up problem solving approaches to prevent/counter violent extremism and fail to take into account the broader structural violence that feeds extremist ideologies. The counter (...) violent extremism policies largely view education as a means to control thinking rather than develop it. Such policies hinder the development of critical consciousness in students that can provide effective defence against extremism. Hence, there is a need to rethink education to counter extremism. Subsequently, the paper shifts its focus to Pakistan, where education has remained a central concern of counter extremism policies since 9/11. Based on 13 expert interviews, I explore higher education practices in Pakistan from practitioners’ perspective. The practitioners point out multiple problems of educational status quo that need to be addressed to counter extremism on campus effectively. (shrink)

This book develops an integrated perspective on the practices and politics of making knowledge work in inclusive development and innovation. While debates about development and innovation commonly appeal to the authority of academic researchers, many current approaches emphasize the plurality of actors with relevant expertise for addressing livelihood challenges. Adopting an action-oriented and reflexive approach, this volume explores the variety of ways in which knowledge works, paying particular attention to dilemmas and controversies. The six parts of the book address the (...) complex interplay of knowledge and politics, starting with the need for knowledge integration in the first part and decolonial perspectives on the politics of knowledge integration in the second part. The following three parts focus on the practices of inclusive development and innovation through three major themes of transformative learning, evidence, and digitization. The final part of the book addresses the governance of knowledge and innovation in the light of political struggles about inclusivity. Exploring conceptual and practical themes through case studies from the Global North and South, this book will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners researching and working in development studies, epistemology, innovation studies, science and technology studies and sustainability studies more broadly. (shrink)

Although research on epistemic injustice has focused on the effects of prejudice in epistemic exchanges, the account of prejudice that emerges in Fricker’s (2007) view is not completely clear. In particular, I claim that the epistemic role of prejudice in the structure of testimonial justification is still in need of a satisfactory explanation. What special epistemic power does prejudice exercise that prevents the speaker’s words from constituting evidence for the hearer’s belief? By clarifying this point, it will be possible to (...) address two more general issues concerning the nature of prejudice: its resistance to counterevidence and the steps involved in overcoming prejudice. I propose a hinge account of prejudice, based on the recent perspective of hinge epistemology, to help clarify these aspects. According to the hinge account, prejudices share a fundamental feature with hinges: they work as norms of evidential significance, and as such, they determine what can and cannot count as evidence for belief. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between violence and the domination of speech in Spinoza’s political thought. Spinoza describes the cost of such violence to the State, to the collective epistemic resources, and to the members of the polity that domination aims to script and silence. Spinoza shows how obedience to a dominating power requires pretense and deception. The pressure to pretend is the linchpin of an account of how oppression severely degrades the conditions for meaningful communication, and thus the possibilities (...) for thinking and acting in common. Because it belongs to human nature to desire to share our thoughts with others, Spinoza believes that most people experience efforts to control our communication to be acutely intolerable. As a result, such unbearable violence threatens the political order that deploys it. I conclude with some speculative remarks about why, in the Theological-Political Treatise, Spinoza consistently deploys the superlative form of the adjective violentus in reference to the domination of thought and speech rather than to other modes of political violence. (shrink)

In this chapter I provide resources for assessing the charge that post-secondary students are self-censoring. The argument is advanced in three broad steps. First, I argue that both a duality at the heart of the concept of self-censorship and the term’s negative lay connotation should incline us to limit the charge of self-censorship to a specific subset of its typical extension. I argue that in general we ought to use the neutral term “refrainment from speech,” reserving the more normatively charged (...) “self-censorship” for cases of bad refrainment. In the second step of the argument, I seek to narrow down what counts as bad refrainment by mapping broad categories of possible reasons for and consequences of refrainment from speech. I argue that in general refrainment from speech is only bad if it is for bad (or what I will later term vicious) reasons or has pernicious consequences. When considering pernicious consequences, I argue that we should be concerned in particular about systems that perpetuate the coercive silencing of marginalized voices. I draw on Kristie Dotson’s work to describe two means by which marginalized voices are systemically silenced: testimonial quieting and testimonial smothering. After considering these types of silencing, I circle back to the post-secondary context to assess whether there is cause for concern if, as some reports suggests, US college students are refraining from speech within the educational context. (shrink)

Epistemologies have power. They have the power not only to transform worlds, but to create them. And the worlds that they create can be better or worse. For many people, the worlds they create are predictably and reliably deadly. Epistemologies can turn sacred land into ‘resources’ to be bought, sold, exploited, and exhausted. They can turn people into ‘labor’ in much the same way. They can not only disappear acts of violence but render them unnamable and unrecognizable within their conceptual (...) architectures. Settler systems of epistemic and conceptual resources and the relations among them are constructed to preclude certain forms of knowledge. This is not an accident; it is a central goal of colonial violence. Colonization and land dispossession would not be possible without the violent disruption of Indigenous knowledge systems and ongoing organized attempts to disrupt their survival. Violently disrupting the relationships of people to land is as much an epistemic project as it is a material one, and these two projects are inherently linked. The task of theorizing epistemic oppression is not only about epistemic oppression. Epistemic oppression is a story that gives language to a phenomenon in order to get past it, to carry on with the maintaining and reviving the forms of Indigenous and diasporic knowledge that colonialism has worked tirelessly to corrupt and silence. (shrink)

"Analyzes the value of using case-based methodologies to address contemporary social justice issues in philosophy"--.

In response to an impasse, articulated in the late 1980s, the cognitive capacities of ordinary people assumed central place in contemporary critical social theory. The participants’ perspective gained precedence over scientific standards branded as external. The notion of cognition, however, went unchallenged. This article continues the move away from external standards, and discusses two models of critique, which differ based on their underlying notions of cognition. The representational model builds on cognitive content, misrecognition and normativity; three features which are illustrated (...) with positions adopted by prominent exponents of critical social theory. An alternative understanding relies on action-oriented disclosure and the participants’ basic familiarity with the social world. On this reading, what clashes with unequal structures is skilful coping, rather than representations and normative standards. The action-oriented approach may overcome the dilemma of understanding both the impact and the possible transcendence of unequal structures, although it cannot ultimately replace representational critique. (shrink)

How might the agency of the subaltern be conceptualized within the intersection of multiple worlds? Actor-network theory’s translation framework for understanding agency portraying this as entrepreneur and talking of a world in the making is arguably “imperialist,” “managerial,” and “monolithic.” Draws from the enactment turn of ANT and insights into the politics of representation, this article elaborates an alternative framework which focuses on displacement. By examining the case of dialysis patients, the article explores the displacing practices that follow the disruption (...) of routines in dialysis. Patients have to go through a process of problematization, distribution, hybridization, and restabilization, in order to sustain the coexistence of their alternative practices with dialysis. Unlike entrepreneurs in the translation model who transform the world by interesting others, enduring trials, and becoming spokespersons for all, those patients who manage to displace and sustain the coexistence of multiple worlds avoid interesting, still less confronting, the hegemonic actors and claiming representation for themselves. This article suggests the displacement of agency as a generic alternative. (shrink)

-/- In the prime years of Hegel’s philosophical career, Prussia made progressive reforms to childhood education. Hegel had long supported reform. In his early Stuttgart Gymnasium Valedictory Address (1788), he had advocated for a public interest in widespread public education as a means for developing the children’s potential. Like Wilhelm von Humboldt, Hegel believed in education’s power to promote individual development (Bildung) as a path of freedom, which is achieved largely by expanding the student’s linguistic capacity since language, as Humboldt (...) understands it, is “the formative organ of thought [das bildende Organ des Gedanken]”. By combining Humboldt’s insights on language (especially his discussion of the power of Sanskrit) with themes in Hegel’s Science of Logic, I will demonstrate that the mind’s power to make judgments is a forward movement that can be arrested by epistemic injustice. Humboldt’s reflections on linguistic flowering and the factors that might impede it can help us understand epistemic injustice as an interference in linguistic cognitive mediation. -/- . (shrink)

Much contemporary social epistemology takes as its starting point individuals with sophisticated propositional attitudes and considers (i) how those individuals depend on each other to gain (or lose) knowledge through testimony, disagreement, and the like and (ii) if, in addition to individual knowers, it is possible for groups to have knowledge. In this paper I argue that social epistemology should be more attentive to the construction of knowers through social and cultural practices: socialization shapes our psychological and practical orientation so (...) that we perform local social practices fluently. Connecting practical orientation to an account of ideology, I argue that to ignore the ways in which cognition is socially shaped and filtered is to allow ideology to do its work unnoticed and unimpeded. Moreover, ideology critique cannot simply challenge belief, but must involve challenges to those practices through which we ourselves become the vehicles and embodiments of ideology.V. (shrink)

Progressive family policy regimes typically aim to promote and protect women’s opportunities to participate in the workforce. These policies offer significant benefits to affluent, two-parent households. A disproportionate number of low-income and impoverished families, however, are headed by single mothers. How responsive are such policies to the objectives of these mothers and the needs of their children? This chapter argues that one-size-fits-all family policy regimes often fail the most vulnerable household and contribute to intergenerational poverty in two ways: by denying (...) at-risk children adequate parenting, and by undermining their mothers’ legitimate interest in nurturing and caring for their own children. The capabilities of these mothers and the well-being of their children are better served by policies which recognise maternal caregiving as a productive and valuable occupation meriting equal respect and social support. (shrink)

Anti-racist education within the Academy holds the potential to truly reflect the cultural hybridity of our diverse, multi-cultural society through the canons of knowledge that educators celebrate, proffer and embody. The centrality of Whiteness as an instrument of power and privilege ensures that particular types of knowledge continue to remain omitted from our curriculums. The monopoly and proliferation of dominant White European canons does comprise much of our existing curriculum; consequently, this does impact on aspects of engagement, inclusivity and belonging (...) particularly for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) learners. This paper explores the impact of a dominant Eurocentric curriculum and the Decolonising the Curriculum agenda within higher education and its influence upon navigating factors such as BAME attainment, engagement and belonging within the Academy. This paper draws on a Critical Race Theory (CRT) theoretical framework to centralize the marginalized voices of fifteen BAME students and three academics of colour regarding this phenomena. Aspects examined consider the impact of a narrow and restrictive curriculum on BAME students and staff and how the omission of diverse histories and multi-cultural knowledge canons facilitates marginalization and discriminatory cultures. (shrink)

What is silence? Is it a loss, an omission? Is it a stopping of the mouth, of the voice? An empty place where no meaning has come forward…or perhaps at times quite the opposite, an absence-as-presence Deleuze, 1990; Derrida, 1976)? Might silence evoke much more about what we assume is our monological, unitary reality, indexing possibilities yet unseen? This paper outlines the ways in which silence is typically understood according to scholarly orthodoxy: as omission in human communication or a silencing (...) of minoritized individuals or communities by those in power. It then moves to critique the preeminence of whitestream Western-centric academic authority, which self-perpetuates via the exclusion of outsider ways of doing, being and knowing such as those brought forward by silence, constituting a loss of meaning and knowledge from the social imaginary. This paper suggests that the pursuit of an articulate unknowing regarding silence as a creative, disruptive force beyond the control of rationality is a means of engaging with radical possibilities for a different, juster world. It proposes a socio-diologic politics of the real that welcomes silence as an unsettling of our current thinking about what is and will be possible, as well as who does and does not matter. It concludes by illustrating the ingenious force of silence in examples of subversive art that expose the hegemonizing, rational version of reality sold by academics and powerholders, bringing forward into the imagination what prospects for change, justice, and social transformation yet await. (shrink)

This paper draws attention to the significance of incorporating decolonial methodologies in analyzing political discourse in a postcolonial world, particularly in Africa. The decolonial approach to political discourse focuses on the ways politics in postcolonial context is imbricated in the logic of coloniality. Decolonial approach is considered necessary rather than sufficient in interrogating the hegemonic structure of colonialism in Africa's political discourse. The paper uses critical discourse analysis situated within decolonial methodologies to analyze former President of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan's declaration-of-intent (...) speech to seek re-election. The paper specifically draws on [Mignolo, W. (2011). The darker side of western modernity: Global futures decolonial options. Duke University Press.] and [Macgilchrist, F. (2014). Media discourse and de/coloniality: A post-foundational approach. In C. Hart & P. Cap (Eds.), Contemporary critical discourse studies (pp. 385–405). Bloomsbury Publishing] decolonial frameworks and [Chilton, P. (2004). Analysing political discourse. Routledge] legitimization model. Situating decolonial approaches together with Chilton's legitimization model is, on the one hand, a way of interrogating hegemonic structures in Goodluck Jonathan's speech and on the other hand works to show the limitation of Chilton's theory in analyzing discourses from Africa. This limitation of Chilton's model underscores the need to bring decolonial approaches in constructing a nuanced understanding of Africa and its epistemic diversity because it is impossible to think of overcoming the coloniality of power without approaching it from the perspective of the colonized. (shrink)

Focusing on Deleuze´s concept of becoming and on the way it embraces difference in the genesis of literary writing, we intend to put in dialogue the concept and the philosopher with the post-colonial criticism and its re-articulation of the subaltern´s issue, to make a reinterpretation of the becoming and its variations – becoming-woman, becoming-minor – for cultural and literary analysis.

Evaluation of other cultures is a strong force in a culture’s definition of itself. Cultures are formed in encounters that include domination, conflict, and dismissal as much as appreciation and smooth exchange. In this paper, the construction of cultural identity is discussed, with reference to a Scandinavian Theme Park proposal made in cooperation between American design consultants and a local Swedish team of planners and visionaries. The image production in this design proposal, which never came to be realised in architectural (...) production, shows that “Scandinavia” appears as a two-some dialogic construction that adopts stereotyped cultural identities, and that it was not brought to any wider public dialogue. In a semiotic account of this architectural decision-making, models of culture (Lotman. 1990.Universe of the mind: A semiotic theory of culture. London: Tauris.) are discussed in terms of the tripartition of culture into Ego-culture, Alter-culture and Alius-culture (Sonesson. 2000. Ego meets alter: The meaning of otherness in cultural semiotics.Semiotica128(3/4). 537–559.; Cabak Rédei, Anna. 2007.An inquiry into cultural semiotics: Germaine de Staël’s autobiographical travel accounts. Lund: Lund University Press.), considered as a basic abstracted backdrop of what is meant by cultural difference. In this paper it is suggested that this tripartite view on culture, can be further discussed in reflection of post-colonial studies, notably through terms such as “mimicry” (Bhabha. 1984. Of mimicry and man: The ambivalence of colonial discourse.October28. 125–133.) and “subalterity” (Spivak. 1988. Can the subaltern speak?. In Cary Nelson & Lawrence Grossberg (eds.),Marxism and the interpretation of culture, 271–313. Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press.). The model of culture can furthermore be discussed through Peirce’s distinction between different stages and carriers of representation, adding to the cultural model an understanding of what it means, over time, for a culture to relate to an admired as well as to a neglected other cultural actor. (shrink)

This article revisits, analyzes and critiques Bruce Chatwin’s 1987 bestseller, The Songlines,1 more than three decades after its publication. In Songlines, the book primarily responsible for his posthumous celebrity, Chatwin set out to explore the essence of Central and Western Desert Aboriginal Australians’ philosophical beliefs. For many readers globally, Songlines is regarded as a—if not the—definitive entry into the epistemological basis, religion, cosmology and lifeways of classical Western and Central Desert Aboriginal people. It is argued that Chatwin’s fuzzy, ill-defined use (...) of the word-concept “songlines”2 has had the effect of generating more heat than light. Chatwin’s failure to recognize the economic imperative underpinning Australian desert people’s walking praxis is problematic: his own treks through foreign lands were underpropped by socioeconomic privilege. Chatwin’s ethnocentric idée fixe regarding the primacy of “walking” and “nomadism,” central to his Songlines thématique, well and truly preceded his visits to Central Australia. Walking, proclaimed Chatwin, is an elemental part of “Man’s” innate nature. It is argued that this unwavering, preconceived, essentialist belief was a self-serving construal justifying Chatwin’s own “nomadic” adventures of identity. Is it thus reasonable to regard Chatwin as a “rogue author,” an unreliable narrator? And if so, does this matter? Of greatest concern is the book’s continuing majority acceptance as a measured, accurate account of Aboriginal belief systems. With respect to Aboriginal desert people and the barely disguised individuals depicted in Songlines, is Chatwin’s book a “rogue text,” constituting an act of epistemic violence, consistent with Spivak’s usage of that term? (shrink)

This essay frames systemic patterns of mental abuse against women of color and Indigenous women on Turtle Island (North America) in terms of larger design-of-distribution strategies in settler colonial societies, as these societies use various forms of social power to distribute, reproduce, and automate social inequalities (including public health precarities and mortality disadvantages) that skew socio-economic gain continuously toward white settler populations and their descendants. It departs from traditional studies in gender-based violence research that frame mental abuses such as gaslighting--commonly (...) understood as mental manipulation through lying or deceit--stochastically, as chance-driven interpersonal phenomena. Building on structural analyses of knowledge in political epistemology (Dotson 2012, Berenstain 2016), political theory (Davis and Ernst 2017), and Indigenous social theory (Tuck and Yang 2012), I develop the notion of cultural gaslighting to refer to the social and historical infrastructural support mechanisms that disproportionately produce abusive mental ambients in settler colonial cultures in order to further the ends of cultural genocide and dispossession. I conclude by proposing a social epidemiological account of gaslighting that a) highlights the public health harms of abusive ambients for minority populations, b) illuminates the hidden rules of social structure in settler colonial societies, and c) amplifies the corresponding need for structural reparations. (shrink)

Nowadays the question of toleration is less related to an international clash of civilizations than to the clashes that take place within the states and polities themselves. The article addresses the sources of toleration in this new global scenario, starting from the following set of questions: Do the sources of toleration differ across time and space? Does toleration have different roots in different civilizational contexts, such as China, India or Islam? Or, is toleration the result of particular institutional frameworks and (...) designs? In this case, does the concept of toleration vary from one institutional setting to the other? Do empires, republics and democracies give rise to different forms of toleration? And last but not least, isn’t toleration rather a matter of individual morality, as many liberal theories sustain? The article distinguishes between three different sources of toleration: individuals, cultures and institutions. Kant and contemporary liberals, as John Rawls who follows him, situate t... (shrink)

Experimental design is one aspect of a scientific method. A well-designed, properly conducted experiment aims to control variables in order to isolate and manipulate causal effects and thereby maximize internal validity, support causal inferences, and guarantee reliable results. Traditionally employed in the natural sciences, experimental design has become an important part of research in the social and behavioral sciences. Experimental methods are also endorsed as the most reliable guides to policy effectiveness. Through a discussion of some of the central concepts (...) associated with experimental design, including controlled variation and randomization, this chapter will provide a summary of key ethical issues that tend to arise in experimental contexts. In addition, by exploring assumptions about the nature of causation and by analyzing features of causal relationships, systems, and inferences in social contexts, this chapter will summarize the ways in which experimental design can undermine the integrity of not only social and behavioral research but policies implemented on the basis of such research. (shrink)

This article aims to analyze how science is discursively attached to certain parts of the world and certain “kinds of people,” i.e., how scientific knowledge is culturally connected to the West and to whiteness. In focus is how the power technology of coloniality organizes scientific content in textbooks as well as how science students are met in the classroom. The empirical data consist of Swedish science textbooks. The analysis is guided by three questions: if and how the colonial history of (...) science is described in Swedish textbooks; how history of science is described; how the global South is represented. The analysis focuses on both what is said and what is unsaid, recurrent narratives, and cultural silences. To discuss how coloniality is organizing the idea of science eduation in terms of the science learner, previous studies are considered. The concepts of power/knowledge, epistemic violence, and coloniality are used to analyze how notions of scientific rationality and modernity are deeply entangled with a colonial way of seeing the world. The analysis shows that the colonial legacy of science and technology is not present in the textbooks. More evident is the talk about science as development. I claim that discourses on scientific development block out stories problematizing the violence done in the name of science. Furthermore, drawing on earlier classroom studies, I examine how the power of coloniality organize how students of color are met and taught, e.g., they are seen as in need of moral fostering rather than as scientific literate persons. (shrink)

This article canvasses a broad range of fish representations across several disciplines. It asks what cultural studies can learn from scientific representation of fish, and argues that in turn cultural studies can be a nuanced understanding of the work of images. The objective of the article is to open debate about fish and their sustainability beyond discrete disciplines and/or ideologies. This, it is argued, is crucial if we are to go beyond a simplified cultural politics of fish.

Today’s technological-scientific prospect of posthumanity simultaneously evokes and defies historical understanding. On the one hand, it implies a historical claim of an epochal transformation concerning posthumanity as a new era. On the other, by postulating the birth of a novel, better-than-human subject for this new era, it eliminates the human subject of modern Western historical understanding. In this article, I attempt to understand posthumanity as measured against the story of humanity as the story of history itself. I examine the fate (...) of humanity as the central subject of history in three consecutive steps: first, by exploring how classical philosophies of history achieved the integrity of the greatest historical narrative of history itself through the very invention of humanity as its subject; second, by recounting how this central subject came under heavy criticism by postcolonial and gender studies in the last half-century, targeting the universalism of the story of humanity as the greatest historical narrative of history; and third, by conceptualizing the challenge of posthumanity against both the story of humanity and its criticism. Whereas criticism fragmented history but retained the possibility of smaller-scale narratives, posthumanity does not doubt the feasibility of the story of humanity. Instead, it necessarily invokes humanity, if only in order to be able to claim its supersession by a better-than-human subject. In that, it represents a fundamental challenge to the modern Western historical condition and the very possibility of historical narratives – small-scale or large-scale, fragmented or universal. (shrink)

A dissociated area of medical research warrants bioethical consideration: a proposed transplantation of a donor’s entire body, except head, to a patient with a fatal degenerative disease. The seeming improbability of such an operation can only underscore the need for thorough bioethical assessment: Not assessing a case of such potential ethical import, by showing neglect instead of facing the issue, can only compound the ethical predicament, perhaps eroding public trust in ethical medicine. This article discusses the historical background of full-body (...) transplantation, documents the seriousness of its current pursuit, and builds an argument for why prima facie this type of transplant is bioethically distinct. Certainly, this examination can only be preliminary, indicating what should be a wide and vigorous discussion among practitioners and ethicists. It concludes with practical suggestions for how the medical and bioethics community may proceed with ethical assessment. (shrink)

This article explores the role of conventions in the normalization of cocoa production in Ecuadorian Amazonia. Convention theory provides key theoretical tools for understanding coordination among agents. However, conventions must be understood as cultural constructions with a strong Eurocentric background that must be substantially modified in originally non-European contexts. A creative application of convention theory can partially overcome bifurcation among Western and non-Western rationalities. First, it shows that Western values and forms of coordination are heterogeneous, conflictive and opposing. Second, it (...) provides key insight for understanding the transformation of subaltern subjectivities generated from non-Western rationalities that are closely associated with subjugated knowledges. Third, in applying the concept of compromise, it allows one to understand cognitive hybridization and coordination among indigenous and Western agents and thus the complexities of processes of resistance, subversion and empowerment carried by indigenous communities. This article is focused on how cocoa production in Ecuadorian Amazonia serves as an example of the confluence and coordination of indigenous (using the concept of “Good Living” or Sumak Kawsay) and Western conventions. The assertion of Sumak Kawsay is understood as a relevant transformation of Ecuadorian post-colonial relations. It is shown that relevant industrial upgrading processes are justified by, among others, Sumak Kawsay repertoires. Additionally, dialogue on knowledge and compromise among conventions, and especially concerning Sumak Kawsay and the market, have been key facets shaping the development of a differentiated quality strand that has promoted relevant changes in the subaltern positioning of indigenous farmers in the cocoa commodity chain. (shrink)

There is growing global consensus that inequality is making sustainable development goals unattainable. Social inclusion of the historically marginalized and equality of opportunity is crucial for sustainable development. Inclusive quality education for all is therefore considered as one of the three main targets for sustainable development according to UNESCO’s Incheon declaration in 2015. This paper draws on an institutional ethnography of a globally interconnected old colonial school’s inclusive pedagogic work in postcolonial India. The school’s work has been much celebrated in (...) existing research by academics, global donor agencies and also by the Indian government’s Sarva Shikshya Abhiyan office. This paper analyses how the school conceptualized a distinct inclusive pedagogy to educate the hearts and the minds of children driven by local community needs for social inclusion within a context of extreme inequality. This paper argues that the school’s conception of inclusive education addressing the diverse learning needs of children developed as a syncretic cultural formation drawing on its institutional mission for social justice, as well as indigenous history of educational reform and philosophy of community engagement. In doing so, this paper engages with the ‘philosophy of context’ and draws on the ‘southern theory’ of inclusive education as envisioned by Rabindranath Tagore, indigenous education reformer and Nobel Laureate poet activist during early twentieth-century colonial British India, who challenged both local and global inequality through his creative and educational work. (shrink)

There's been a great deal of interest in epistemology regarding what it takes for a hearer to come to know on the basis of a speaker's say-so. That is, there's been much work on the epistemology of testimony. However, what about when hearers don't believe speakers when they should? In other words, what are we to make of when testimony goes wrong? A recent topic of interest in epistemology and feminist philosophy is how we sometimes fail to believe speakers due (...) to inappropriate prejudices – implicit or explicit. This is known as epistemic injustice. In this article, I discuss Miranda Fricker's groundbreaking work on epistemic injustice, as well as more recent developments that both offer critique and expansion on the nature and extent of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

Whose personal is more political? This article explores the role of experience in contemporary feminist politics, arguing that it operates as a form of capital within abstracted and decontextualised debates which entrench existing power relations. In a neoliberal context in which the personal and emotional is commodified, powerful groups mobilise traumatic narratives to gain political advantage. Through case study analysis this article shows how privileged feminists, speaking for others and sometimes for themselves, use experience to generate emotion and justify particular (...) agendas, silencing critics who are often from more marginalised social positions. The use of the experiential as capital both reflects and perpetuates the neoliberal invisibilisation of structural dynamics: it situates all experiences as equal, and in the process fortifies existing inequalities. This competitive discursive field is polarising, and creates selective empathies through which we tend to discredit others’ realities instead of engaging with their politics. However, I am not arguing for a renunciation of the politics of experience: instead, I ask that we resist its commodification and respect varied narratives while situating them in a structural frame. (shrink)

Common notions of comparative philosophy tend to be strongly configured by the East-West axis. This essay suggests ways of seeing Latin American liberation philosophy as a form of comparative philosophy and an important Latin American thinker as being relevant for East-West political philosophy. The essay focuses on the Peruvian activist and intellectual, José Mariátegui, who is widely regarded to have been a leading Marxist, liberatory, and decolonial figure in 20th century Latin America. Like many “Third World” intellectuals of the interwar (...) years, Mariátegui had an interest in decolonization struggles in Asia and wrote with some consistency on this subject and in ways that bear significantly upon key themes in his political theory. Since very little of this has received commentary, this essay begins a discussion of Mariátegui's decolonial experimentation with ideas about Asia, decolonization, and indigenous cultural forms, like those of the Incas and Confucians. After some preliminary discussion of Euro.. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt has been criticized for her “blindness” to the sociopolitical significance of race and racism in the West, most notably, in her “Reflections on Little Rock.” I consider three prominent explanations for Arendt's wrongheaded conclusions in “Reflections.” First, the “category interpretation” presents Arendt's conclusions as resulting from her rigid application of philosophical categories—the public, the private, and the social—to events in Little Rock. Second, the “racial prejudice interpretation” presents Arendt's conclusions as resulting from her anti-black racism and her dismissal (...) of the political strivings of African Americans. Third, the “cultural interpretation” presents Arendt's conclusions as resulting from her misunderstanding of the sociopolitical significance of race and racism in the United States. Each of these interpretations advances our understanding of Arendt's oversights, but I contend that they do not go far enough. I argue that white ignorance constitutes a fundamental epistemic error in Arendt's work and, as such, strengthens current explanations of Arendt's “blindness” to the history and political strivings of African Americans. If accepted, my analysis—following Charles Mills's work on white ignorance—calls for increased theoretical work on epistemologies of ignorance, their function in Western political philosophy, and the affect of white ignorance on cognizers in American society. (shrink)

This article traces commonalities between the practices of visual animation and modern law through a political and jurisprudential reading of the animated film Ratatouille. It contends that Ratatouille’s treatment of the ontological and anthropological problem of the human soul not only addresses the philosophical complexities inherent to animation, but also the ideological and material conditions that currently govern the practice of égaliberté in contemporary liberal democracies.

The studies of urban popular culture in modern China in recent years have attracted wide attention from scholars in China and abroad. The symposium, which is composed by Ma Min’s “Injecting vitality into the studies of urban cultural history,” Jiang Jin’s “Issues in the studies of urban popular culture in modern China,” Wang Di’s “The microcosm of Chinese cities: The perspective and methodology of studying urban popular culture from the case of teahouses in Chengdu,” Joseph W. Esherick’s “Remaking the Chinese (...) city: Urban space and urban culture” and Lu Hanchao’s “From elites to common people: The downward trend in the studies of Chinese urban history in the United States,” provide valuable insights on the perspective, trend, and methodology of the studies. (shrink)

Drawing on 2 years of field research conducted between 2008 and 2010 in London’s Kurdish community, I discuss the practical and ethical challenges that confront researchers dealing with violence against women committed in the name of ‘honour’. In examining how feminist methodologies and principles inform my research, I address issues of researcher positioning and the importance of speaking with, rather than for, marginalised groups. I then explore the difficulties of operationalising this position when dealing with honour-based violence. Using the interview (...) data from the 2008–2010 study and a case study of the trial of Mehmet Goren (who was convicted in 2009 of murdering his daughter Tulay for supposedly dishonouring their family), I discuss the socio-cultural norms and values underlying honour codes, examining both the position of men and women in relation to the maintenance of family honour and the regulation of women’s sexuality and conduct. In particular, I explore the difficulties inherent in obtaining and understanding victims’ own personal narratives, especially in legal settings, while simultaneously showing how it is only through empowering women to speak for themselves that we will be able to bring about the deep societal changes needed to eradicate honour-based violence. (shrink)

This article examines the role of rights in both governing and shaping women’s relationship with the reconstruction process and their position in the reconstructed society. Through four years of empirical research in the post-earthquake reconstruction process in Maharashtra, India, this article focuses upon how women’s rights in social reconstruction are contingent upon processes of recognition. From the United Nations to local women’s organising, the article considers how women’s rights to “determine the pattern of their lives and the future of society” (...) (United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (C.E.D.A.W.). General Recommendation No. 23 (1997), Article 7, para. 9.) are dependent upon processes of recognition. Through a critique of cultural, material and spatial acts and frameworks of recognition within the U.N., World Bank, State Government, public interest litigation, personal and nonformal law, rights are seen to actively and hierarchically construct either a modern, liberal subject or a religious, communitarian subject, which both either deny or prescribe agency. The experience of women’s organising reveals the possibility of reconstructing a feminist rights strategy of reflection. (shrink)

Ratna Kapur’s recent book entitled Erotic Justice proposes a new politics of postcolonialism whereby the sexual subaltern disrupts the normative principles of the universal, liberal, legal domain. Kapur traces legal strategies regarding censorship, sex-work, homosexuality, sexual harassment, trafficking and migration which travel a treacherous path, countering allegations of ‘unIndian’ and Western practice with cultural histories of ‘authentic’ sexual legitimacies, towards a new politics of desire. Kapur frames her analysis through postcolonial feminist theory as providing a tool for feminist struggle, yet (...) distinct from and disruptive of a liberal project of global sisterhood. This review deeply values the role of the sexual subaltern which disrupts the tenets of a linear, progressive liberalism. Drawing upon Indian feminist and Western feminist perspectives, the review considers how the distinct position of the postcolonial sexual subaltern subject informs the generic role of law as a tool constructing relations of domination regarding gender, sexuality, caste, property and religion. Kapur observes that both the West and the Hindu Right have engaged with liberal legal principles. This engagement, I argue, exposes and informs law as a historical and contemporary tool of gendered legal colonialism, for sisters to disrupt across the Western and Eastern terrains. (shrink)