Ecologies of Knowledge in Chirere’s Tudikidiki (2007): on Decolonial Ontological Turn

This article is an attempt to bring decolonial strands of critical thinking to African/Zimbabwean literary tradition. It explores how Memory Chirere uses the short story genre as a territory of practical life where decolonial practical relations of emancipatory knowledge production are weighed. It argues that the anthology, Tudikidiki, (2007) as Chirere's territory of artisanship of practices, evokes ecologies of knowledge crucial for developing decolonial options. From decolonial epistemic perspective, the article posits that the enduring historical duration of coloniality has elucidated the presence of unequal relations in African knowledge production systems. In its multiple manifestations, coloniality has disfigured, distorted, reconfigured and eventually transformed African ways of knowing. The result is epistemicide, in which Western epistemic systems are valorised as indispensable and unassailable, while indigenous forms of African knowing are vilified as setting a site for conflicting savage desires and derisions. Against this background, this paper considers the imperative need for engaging both indigenous theoretical and practical epistemological projects in terms of the nuances of decoloniality within literary studies. It insists that decolonial turn necessitates a process of ontological change that speaks to the emergency of nascent ecologies of knowledges.

A Critical Analysis of the Trust Human Agents Have in Computational and Embodied AI

The notion of trust has evolved to become one of the many nebulous buzzwords centering around AI. This paper aims at showing that, with regards to human influenceability through AI, trust in AI is to be seen as problematic. Based on the notion of socio-technical epistemic systems, I will argue that the trust human agents have in AI is strongly related to what could be understood as algorithmic authority. The second part of this paper will then translate the elaborated line of argument to the field of social robotics.

Knowing in interaction: An introduction

This article provides an introduction for the collection of methodologically oriented papers comprising this Special Issue. We define the concept of epistemicity as used in descriptive linguistics and discuss notions related to it – some well-established, some more recent – such as evidentiality, egophoricity, epistemic authority and engagement. We give a preliminary overview of the different types of epistemic marking attested in the languages of the world and discuss the recent developments in the field of epistemic research focussing on methodologies for investigating epistemic marking. In the second part of the paper, we focus on the more practical side of epistemic fieldwork; the types of data that can be used in documenting linguistic expressions of epistemicity and best practices for data collection. We discuss the experimental methods that are used in the description of epistemic systems, both those developed for this particular purpose and those adapted from other types of linguistic research. We provide a critical evaluation of those materials and stimuli and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. Finally, we introduce the contributions to the Special Issue, discussing the languages studied by the authors of the contributions and the fieldwork methods they used in their research.

Epistemic relativism and circularity

In this paper, I review Steven Bland’s recent attempt to refute epistemic relativism by means of a dialectical argument that proves non-circularly the objective reliability of naturalistic epistemic systems. Before addressing Bland’s argument, I present the incommensurability thesis and its relation to epistemic relativism. I conclude by arguing that Bland’s attempt to refute relativism must explain how and why the commitments to our epistemic systems should lead us to judge their reliability.

Beyond the Ideological Siege: A Critical Reading of Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451

The current paper is set to investigate the clash of ideologies and culturesas encoded in the American novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. This qualitative study aims at analysing the narrative text, from Marxist perspective and Foucault’s views on power and knowledge. It is hypothesized that knowledge and anti-knowledge reshape the clash of cultures in human communities. The objectives of this research paper are to investigate the clash of ideologies or, more specifically, the clash of epistemic systems in a dystopian society, as well as to unmask the games played by the political powers to annihilate human awareness and identity to convince the community to practice the culture of bourgeoisie. As a mass consumption community, this anti-intellectual ideology results in the sterility of life. One finding of the study is that the cultural shock experience by, Montag, the protagonist enables him to resist and break the ideological siege which is imposed by power. He became the modern hero of the culture who joined the elite or the sophisticated culture experiences by the Book people or the renegade intellectuals who believe in the progress of mankind through the sophisticated philosophy of loving and reading books.

Epistemic Pluralism: From Systems to Stances

Drawing on insights from the epistemological work of the Jaina philosophers of classical India, I argue in defense of epistemic pluralism, the view that there are different but equally valid ways of knowing the world. The version of epistemic pluralism I defend is stance pluralism, a pluralism about epistemic stances or perspectives, understood to be policies or stratagems of knowing. I reject the view that the correct way to characterize epistemic pluralism is as consisting in a pluralism about epistemic systems.

Reclaiming Romani-ness

Drawing on theories of identity postulated by cultural theorists, scholars of gender identity, and critical race theorists, I explore issues of identity politics and “Otherness” as they pertain to Romani identity, history and activism. By critiquing the latent bifurcation of identity and subjectivity in Judith Butler’s theory of performativity as well as her explicit adherence to universalism, I begin to outline a (post-Hegelian) hermeneutic in which narratives of self enable political processes of self-determination against symbolic and epistemic systems of racialization and minoritization.[1] Roma identity both serves as an oppressive social category while at the same time empowering people for whom a shared ethnic group provides a sense of solidarity and community. In re-conceptualizing, reimagining and re-claiming Romani-ness, we can make movements towards outlining a new Romani subjectivity – a subjectivity that is firmly rooted in counterhistories of Roma, with porous boundaries that both celebrate our diversity and foster solidarity. I come to the subject of Romani identity from an understanding that our racialized and gendered identities are both performed and embodied – forming part of the horizon from which we make meaning of the world. I wish to recast the discourse surrounding Romani identity as hybridized and multicultural, as well as, following Glissant, embedded into a pluritopic notion of history.

The Rule of Experts

The division of labor creates a division of knowledge, which creates expertise and the problem of experts. The rule of experts exists when experts have an epistemic monopoly and choose for others. Generally, experts may have power that threatens individual autonomy. Competition tends to dissipate the power of experts, although the details of market structure matter. Even well-meaning experts may fail because they have bounded rationality. Epistemic monopoly increases the risks of error and expert failure; competition reduces them. Information choice theory is an economic theory of experts. It may help in the design of epistemic systems, which are agent-based processes viewed from perspective of their knowledge properties. Epistemic engineering studies the design principles of epistemic systems. Economists should consider the epistemic properties of alternative institutions to minimize the problem of experts and avoid the rule of experts. Applications discussed include religion, law and justice, and medical research.