Nightmare Knowledges: Epistemologies of Disappearance

2019 ◽  
pp. 253-272
Author(s):  
Ege Selin Islekel
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Mass Graves ◽  
Epistemic Agency ◽  
Political Technology

This chapter develops a conception of necropolitics as a power/knowledge assemblage by focusing on the games of truth and regimes of knowledge produced around death in the cases of mass graves and disappearance in Turkey. In particular, I am interested in the relations drawn between death, memory, and knowledge in necropolitical spaces, in spaces where life and the living are subsumed under the active production, regulation, and optimisation of death. The chapter consists of three parts: the first part analyses the relation between necropolitics and knowledge production, in order to establish necropolitics not only as a political technology, but also an epistemic one. The second section investigates the specific techniques of knowledge deployed in necropolitics, i.e., necro-epistemic methods, which target the temporal and logical coherence of memory in necropolitical spaces. The last section focuses on the practices of epistemic resistance, which work through mobilising perplexing realities in order to instigate counter-discourses. Overall, I argue that these counter-discourses, which I call ‘nightmare-knowledges,’ constitute necropolitical spaces as spaces of epistemic agency.

scholarly journals A code for care and control: The PIN as an operator of interoperability in the Nordic welfare state

2021 ◽  
pp. 095269512110177
Author(s):  
Marja Alastalo ◽  
Ilpo Helén
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
Data Repositories ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Nordic Welfare State ◽  
Political Technology ◽  
And Control ◽  
Elementary Building

Many states make use of personal identity numbers (PINs) to govern people living in their territory and jurisdiction, but only a few rely on an all-purpose PIN used throughout the public and private sectors. This article examines the all-purpose PIN in Finland as a political technology that brings people to the sphere of public welfare services and subjects them to governance by public authorities and expert institutions. Drawing on documentary materials and interviews, it unpacks the history and uses of the PIN as an elementary building block of the Nordic welfare state, and its emerging uses in the post-welfare data economy. The article suggests that, although the PIN is capable of individualizing, identifying, and addressing individuals, its most important and widely embraced feature is the extent to which it enables interoperability among public authorities, private businesses, and their data repositories. Interoperability, together with advances in computing and information technology, has made the PIN a facilitator of public administration, state knowledge production, and everyday life. More recently, in the post-welfare data economy, interoperability has rendered the PIN a national asset in all the Nordic countries, providing a great advantage to biomedical research, innovation business, and healthcare.

scholarly journals Knowledge From Vice: Deeply Social Epistemology

Mind ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 129 (515) ◽  
pp. 887-915 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Levy ◽  
Mark Alfano
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Epistemic Agency ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Past ◽  
Epistemic Virtues ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology ◽  
Human Social Life

Abstract In the past two decades, epistemologists have significantly expanded the focus of their field. To the traditional question that has dominated the debate — under what conditions does belief amount to knowledge? — they have added questions about testimony, epistemic virtues and vices, epistemic trust, and more. This broadening of the range of epistemic concern has coincided with an expansion in conceptions of epistemic agency beyond the individualism characteristic of most earlier epistemology. We believe that these developments have not gone far enough. While the weak anti-individualism we see in contemporary epistemology may be adequate for the kinds of cases it tends to focus on, a great deal of human knowledge production and transmission does not conform to these models. Furthermore, the dispositions and norms that are knowledge-conducive in the familiar cases may not be knowledge-conducive generally. In fact, dispositions that, at an individual level, count as epistemic vices may be epistemic virtues in common social contexts. We argue that this overlooked feature of human social life means that epistemology must become more deeply and pervasively social.

Can Non‐Europeans Philosophize? Transnational Literacy and Planetary Ethics in a Global Age

Hypatia ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 488-505
Author(s):  
Nikita Dhawan
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Feminist Critique ◽  
Epistemic Agency ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Global Age ◽  
European Philosophy ◽  
Syrian Refugee Crisis ◽  
Postcolonial Feminist

Defenders of the Enlightenment highlight the long neglected anticolonial writings of thinkers like Immanuel Kant, which serve as a corrective to the misrepresentation of the Enlightenment's epistemological investment in imperialism. One of the most pervasive repercussions of the claim that the Enlightenment was always already anti‐imperial is that postcolonial critique is rendered redundant, and the project of decolonizing European philosophy becomes unnecessary. Contesting the exoneration of Enlightenment philosophers of racism and sexism, this article debunks the claim that Kantian cosmopolitanism was an antidote to colonialism. Addressing the ambivalent legacies of the European Enlightenment for the postcolonial world, with special focus on the “Syrian refugee crisis,” the article examines the enduring normative violence exerted by Enlightenment principles of cosmopolitanism and outlines the contested terrains that inflect current geopolitics of knowledge‐production. Given that the normative idea of philosophy, as defined during the Enlightenment, continues to delegitimize non‐European perspectives, the integration of previously marginalized knowledges into the philosophical canon is insufficient; rather, in order to desubalternize non‐Western epistemologies, it is imperative to undo the uneven distribution of epistemic agency globally. Drawing on Gayatri Spivak's ideas of transnational literacy and planetary ethics, the article concludes by underscoring the contribution of postcolonial‐feminist critique in imagining postimperial philosophy in a global age.

scholarly journals Fixing Subjects, Fixing Outcomes: Civic Epistemologies and Epistemic Agency in Participatory Governance of Climate Risk

2021 ◽  
pp. 016224392110661
Author(s):  
Anna Bridel
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Participatory Governance ◽  
Atmospheric Gases ◽  
Epistemic Agency ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
The Face ◽  
Climatic Risks ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Matters Of Concern

Participatory forms of policy-making have often been criticized for insufficiently theorizing the coproduction of publics and matters of concern. This paper seeks to investigate this relationship further by analyzing how the concept of civic epistemologies (CEs) can provide insights for understanding how political contexts shape both publics and contestable debates. Presenting fieldwork on cyclone governance in Odisha, India, based on the analysis of interviews with vulnerable fishing communities and state actors, the article shows how CEs influence the interdependent formation of vulnerable fisher and state subjectivities on one hand with representations of risk located in external biophysical atmospheric gases on the other, thereby sustaining reductive roles and futures. At the same time, the paper develops the concept of CEs by examining them as performative acts carried out by marginalized communities and state actors at the subnational level of a nonindustrialized country, thereby indicating sites at which epistemic agency can be increased and governed. Participatory knowledge production needs to understand how it is affected by CEs if it is to generate effective expertise for transformative futures in the face of increasing climatic risks.

O tym, co minęło, lecz nie zostało zapomniane: Badania archeologiczne na terenie byłego obozu zagłady w Treblince

2012 ◽  
pp. 83-118
Author(s):  
Caroline Sturdy Colls
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Analysis ◽  
Archaeological Survey ◽  
Mass Graves ◽  
Non Invasive ◽  
Physical Evidence ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Analysis ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
Level Of Knowledge ◽  
Answering Questions

Public impression of the Holocaust is unquestionably centred on knowledge about, and the image of, Auschwitz-Birkenau – the gas chambers, the crematoria, the systematic and industrialized killing of victims. Conversely, knowledge of the former extermination camp at Treblinka, which stands in stark contrast in terms of the visible evidence that survives pertaining to it, is less embedded in general public consciousness. As this paper argues, the contrasting level of knowledge about Auschwitz- Birkenau and Treblinka is centred upon the belief that physical evidence of the camps only survives when it is visible and above-ground. The perception of Treblinka as having been “destroyed” by the Nazis, and the belief that the bodies of all of the victims were cremated without trace, has resulted in a lack of investigation aimed at answering questions about the extent and nature of the camp, and the locations of mass graves and cremation pits. This paper discusses the evidence that demonstrates that traces of the camp do survive. It outlines how archival research and non-invasive archaeological survey has been used to re-evaluate the physical evidence pertaining to Treblinka in a way that respects Jewish Halacha Law. As well as facilitating spatial and temporal analysis of the former extermination camp, this survey has also revealed information about the cultural memory.

A study of practice based design research models from knowledge integration perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Honghai LI ◽  
Jun CAI
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Knowledge Integration ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Design Knowledge ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Proposed Model ◽  
Design Innovation

The transformation of China's design innovation industry has highlighted the importance of design research. The design research process in practice can be regarded as the process of knowledge production. The design 3.0 mode based on knowledge production MODE2 has been shown in the Chinese design innovation industry. On this cognition, this paper establishes a map with two dimensions of how knowledge integration occurs in practice based design research, which are the design knowledge transfer and contextual transformation of design knowledge. We use this map to carry out the analysis of design research cases. Through the analysis, we define four typical practice based design research models from the viewpoint of knowledge integration. This method and the proposed model can provide a theoretical basis and a path for better management design research projects.

Some Things are Worth Losing to Become./? Trans Masculinity|Queer Autoethnography|Where Theory and the Body Collide

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-50
Author(s):  
Matt Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
The Body ◽  
Trans People ◽  
Family Home

This essay seeks to interrogate what it means to become a legible man as someone who held space as a multiplicity of identities before realising and negotiating my trans manhood. It raises the question of how we as trans people account for the shifting nature of our subjectivity, our embodiment and, indeed, our bodies. This essay locates this dialogue on the site of my body where I have placed many tattoos, which both speak to and inform my understanding of myself as a trans man in Ireland. Queer theory functions as a focal tool within this essay as I question family, home, transition, sexuality, and temporality through a queer autoethnographic reading of the tattoos on my body. This essay pays homage to the intersecting traditions within queer theory and autoethnography. It honours the necessity for the indefinable, for alternative knowledge production and representations, for the space we need in order to become, to allow for the uncertainty of our becoming.

Active Coeliac: Disassembling Gluten and Coeliac Disease

Somatechnics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 188-205
Author(s):  
Sofia Varino
Keyword(s):  
Coeliac Disease ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Food Additive ◽  
Gluten Free ◽  
Biomedical Knowledge ◽  
Dietary Practices ◽  
Object A ◽  
Scientific Knowledge Production ◽  
New Materialisms

This article follows the trajectories of gluten in the context of Coeliac disease as a gastrointestinal condition managed by lifelong adherence to a gluten-free diet. Oriented by the concept of gluten as an actant (Latour), I engage in an analysis of gluten as a participant in volatile relations of consumption, contact, and contamination across coeliac eating. I ask questions about biomedical knowledge production in the context of everyday dietary practices alongside two current scientific research projects developing gluten-degrading enzymes and gluten-free wheat crops. Following the new materialisms of theorists like Elizabeth A. Wilson, Jane Bennett, Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour, I approach gluten as an alloy, an impure object, a hybrid assemblage with self-organizing and disorganizing capacity, not entirely peptide chain nor food additive, not only allergen but also the chewy, sticky substance that gives pizza dough its elastic, malleable consistency. Tracing the trajectories of gluten, this article is a case study of the tricky, slippery capacity of matter to participate in processes of scientific knowledge production.

Internationalization in Higher Education in Russia: Challenges, Lessons and Prospects of Collaboration with Vietnam

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Kraevskaia
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Education Reform ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Professional Training ◽  
National Interests ◽  
International Networks ◽  
International Dimension ◽  
Main Factors ◽  
Internationalization In Higher Education ◽  
New Strategies

The article addresses the needs of educational system in context of rapidly developing globalization and explores internationalization of higher education as one of the main factors which contributes to integration of international dimension to professional training at universities. Different components and strategies of internationalization, such as strong collaboration in teaching, internationalization of the curriculum, cooperation in researches and knowledge production, students and professors’ mobility, and participation in international networks are analyzed in connection to education reform in Russia. The article provides the comparison of internationalization policies in Russian and Vietnamese education systems, argues that innovations in higher education should be adjusted to the national interests, traditions and mentality and finally describes new strategies in collaboration of Russia and Vietnam in the field of education.  

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