Epistemological violence and Indigenous autoethnographies

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-32
Author(s):  
Michelle Bishop
Keyword(s):  
Epistemological Violence

Beyond the subject–object binary: Towards cosmopolitan knowledge

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 448-454
Author(s):  
David Neilson
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Object Relation ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Global Knowledge ◽  
Intersectionality Theory ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Epistemological Violence ◽  
Everyday Knowledge ◽  
Counter Argument ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

Rather than distinguishing, as Held’s (2020) article does, between “subjective” and “objective” forms of knowledge, this commentary makes the counter argument that the subject–object relation is an integral feature of all forms of knowledge, which can be more usefully distinguished according to differences in the form of the subject–object relation. I specifically differentiate the subject–object relation of Western social science from those of everyday knowledge and non-Western forms of knowledge. Western social science’s epistemological violence to other(ed) forms of knowledge is enabled, this commentary argues, by the false assumption that it is a subject-less objectivity while other forms of knowledge are subjective. The alternative epistemological subject position introduced here contrasts the epistemic imperialism of Western social science with a cosmopolitan vision of a dynamic global knowledge driven by the constructive articulation of differently limited knowledge forms. I then discuss this paper’s epistemological subject position in relation to class and intersectionality theory.

Peaceful Nuclear Tests, Eco-friendly Reactors, and the Vantage Point of Tamasha

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-223
Author(s):  
Fathima Nizaruddin
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The South ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Nuclear Tests ◽  
Asian Context ◽  
Epistemological Violence

The article analyzes the role of the documentary form in building pronuclear narratives around the Indian nuclear project. It situates the nuclear films made by two state institutions, Films Division of India (Films Division) and Vigyan Prasar, as part of a network of expert statements, documentary assertions, and state violence that bring into being a pronuclear reality. Through the insights gained from my practice-based enquiry, which led to the production and circulation of a film titled Nuclear Hallucinations, I argue that the certainty of the pronouncements of such documentaries can be unsettled by approaching them as a tamasha. I rely on the multiple connotations of the word tamasha in the South Asian context and its ability to turn solemn assertions into a matter of entertainment or a joke. This vantage point of tamasha vis-à-vis the Indian nuclear project builds upon the strategies of antinuclear documentaries that resist the epistemological violence of pronuclear assertions. In this article, I explore the role of comic modes and irony in forming sites of tamasha to create trouble within the narratives that position nonviolent antinuclear protestors as “antinational” elements. The article also expands on how the point of view of tamasha can engender new solidarities, which can resist the violence of the Indian nuclear project by forming new configurations of possibilities.

Aesthetic as genetic: The epistemological violence of gaydar research

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander T. Vasilovsky
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Nonverbal Cues ◽  
Sexual Citizenship ◽  
Craniofacial Structure ◽  
Political Ethic ◽  
Phenotypic Variations ◽  
Epistemological Violence ◽  
Better Than

In recent years, “gaydar” has come under increasing scientific scrutiny. Gaydar researchers have found that we can accurately judge sexual orientation at better than chance levels from various nonverbal cues. Why they could find what they did is typically chalked up to gender inverted phenotypic variations in craniofacial structure that distinguish homosexuals. This interpretation of gaydar data (the “hegemonic interpretation”) maintains a construction of homosexuality as both a “natural kind” and an “entitative” category. As a result, culturally and historically contingent markers of homosexuality are naturalized under the guise of gaydar. Of significant relevance to this article’s critique of gaydar research is that the hegemonic interpretation is presented as politically advantageous for LGB people by its authors, an undertheorized assumption that risks sanctioning an epistemological violence with unfortunate, demobilizing sociopolitical consequences. This critique is contextualized within current debates regarding intimate/sexual citizenship and advocates, instead, for a queer political ethic that considers such cultural erasure to be politically untenable.

The use of pathological grief outcomes in bereavement studies on African Americans

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 384-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leeat Granek ◽  
Tal Peleg-Sagy
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Clinical Implications ◽  
Medical Sciences ◽  
Prolonged Grief ◽  
Traumatic Grief ◽  
Scientific Databases ◽  
Pathological Grief ◽  
Epistemological Violence

Pathological bereavement outcomes (i.e., complicated grief, traumatic grief, prolonged grief disorder) are a robust and growing research area in the psychological and medical sciences. Although grief is considered to be a universal phenomenon, it is well documented that grieving processes and outcomes are culturally and contextually bound. The objectives of this study were: (a) to examine representations of African Americans in the grief and mourning literature and to assess the extent to which this research utilizes pathological grief outcomes; and (b) to examine the characteristics of pathological grief constructs in the literature to assess their relevance for African American populations. We conducted comprehensive searches of three scientific databases including PsycNET, Medline, and CINAHL, which contain the majority of grief and mourning literature published between January 1998 and February 2014. We found 59 studies addressing grief and mourning in African Americans. Thirteen of these studies used pathological grief outcomes. Pathological grief outcomes that were constructed and validated on White populations were frequently used as outcome variables with African American participants. We discuss the implications for the grief and mourning field and argue that the failure to use culturally sensitive outcome measures in research studies is a form of epistemological violence that may have negative research and clinical implications for African Americans and other ethnic minorities.

scholarly journals Beyond Turner’s Liminal Community: The Perpetual Crisis of Politics and the Everyday

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Daniel Hignell-Tully
Keyword(s):  
Niklas Luhmann ◽  
Political Language ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The World ◽  
Autonomous Management ◽  
Social Anthropologist ◽  
Epistemological Violence ◽  
Politically Active

The social anthropologist Victor Turner describes the process of a communitas as orientated around crisis - a liminal stage by which the community compensates for any breaches within their existing understanding of the world. As a liminal stage, crisis is the means by which a community remains politically active, in so far as it relies on the local, autonomous management of change to the lived environment. This paper seeks to explore the nature of communication as a tool of crisis, arguing that the community relies upon a network of crisis occurring both from first-hand and communally-derived communication, for which it is the distance between its membership that allows a community to flourish. Invoking the critical theory of Jean-Luc Nancy, and systems theory of Niklas Luhmann to interrogate such a network, I will argue that it is the performed misuse of a communities shared symbols that allows it to maintain political resonance. With this in mind, I will propose that the advent of what I term ‘perpetual crisis’ seeks to fundamentally undermine such a resonance, usurping the lived crisis of our everyday interactions with Other, in favour of a perpetual state of epistemological violence that exists beyond the limits of our control.  Exploring the tone and utility of political language within the mainstream media, I will seek to draw a parallel between the narrative disjunction of politicians and their policies as a means of highlighting the imposition of a crisis that impedes communitas by distancing a communities membership from meaningful political redress.

Mistaking the subject of violence in scientific psychology

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 436-439
Author(s):  
Rex Olson
Keyword(s):  
Public Policies ◽  
Racial Groups ◽  
Scientific Psychology ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Epistemological Violence

Barbara Held (2020) claims that critical and Indigenous psychologists are right to point out how scientific psychology has contributed to findings that do undue harm to racial groups, but are wrong to suggest that, due to epistemological violence, scientific psychology cannot provide psychological truths that may inform progressive public policies. She rightly questions the relevance to violence of “for” and “about” findings in being linked to metaphors of “below” and “above” as discussed in Thomas Teo’s work, but then pivots to offer a violent corrective, asserting the importance of objectivity for capturing the situated subjectivity of individuals engaged in the oppressive practice of othering. Despite its promise for socially just consequences, Held offers a psychological science that remains in itself a subject of violence.

Straight macho nationalism

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henning Fischer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Multiple Identities ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Wing Movement ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Right ◽  
Epistemological Violence ◽  
Mainstream Culture

While both Polish mainstream and right-wing movement inherit aggressive homophobic discourses, gay mayors and even anti-homophobic Neo-Nazis seem to be evidence for a German paradise of (homo-)sexuality. The essay traces homophobic discourses in the imagery of the right-wing and the mainstream in post-'communist' Poland and compares them to the seemingly tolerant mainstream culture in Germany. The difference seems to be clear: in Poland homosexuality has become the ticket which stands for all the fears which are present in a rapidly changing (catholic) society; homosexuality in Germany is a commodity sold like everything else in capitalism - and has thus created space for sexual self-expression beyond heterosexism. Obviously, it's not that easy: homosexuality sells, but homophobia does, too. Besides other problems, the comparison highlights the danger of mistaking current capitalist cultural production for a emancipatory situation where multiple identities really could evolve without limits - may the latter be created by physical or epistemological violence or the coercions of the free market.

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