UN/Doing Epistemic Violence

doi:10.20446/JEP-2414-3197-39-1-5

Un/Doing Epistemic Violence while Trying to Change the World

https://doi.org/10.20446/JEP-2414-3197-39-1-5

Volume XXXIX • Issue 1/2 • 2023

Pages 5-29

Keywords: Epistemic violence, knowledge, decolonisation, academia, colonial modernity

Abstract

The aim of this introduction to the present JEP volume on epistemic violence is threefold: by linking a post- and decolonial perspective to the productively ambivalent German notion of Gewalt, I first argue why it is important to keep analysing and theorising epistemic violence across different scholarly disciplines and fields of (academic) knowledge production. Second, and based on the concept of the coloniality of power, knowledge, and being, I present a multi-disciplinary approach to the concept of epistemic violence that is rooted in multi-disciplinary efforts to work with it. Based on a multitude of approaches to the problem, readers from many disciplines can find ways to make use of it within their own terrain of knowledge. Third, I introduce the notion of Hegemonie(selbst-)kritik in order to link the heterogeneous efforts of dealing with epistemic violence, both as a phenomenon and as a concept, that are presented in this volume, with a deep reflection on our own scholarly practices across modernity’s epistemic territory and its Euro-Anglo-American epistemic monoculture. The latter has inspired the title and focus of this article. Since even critical scholarship cannot transcend the double-bind that comes along with knowledge production in colonial modernity, we should remember that our efforts to undoing epistemic violence remain entangled with the colonial condition. This is why I suggest speaking of un/doing epistemic violence instead of claiming to be able to fully undo it.

Literature

Arendt, Hannah (1970): Macht und Gewalt. München: Piper.

Balibar, Étienne (2009): Reflections on Gewalt. In: Historical Materialism 17(1), 99–125. https://doi.org/10.1163/156920609X399227

Balibar, Étienne (2015): Violence and Civility. On the Limits of Political Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/bali15398

Benjamin, Walter (1965 [1921]): Zur Kritik der Gewalt und andere Aufsätze. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Bennett, Karen (2007): Epistemicide! The Tale of a Predatory Discourse. In: The Translator. Studies in Intercultural Communication 13(2), 151–169. https://doi. org/10.1080/13556509.2007.10799236

Bennett, Karen (2015): Towards an Epistemological Monoculture. Mechanisms of Epistemicide in European Research Publication. In: Plo-Alastrué, Ramón/ Pérez-Llantada, Carmen (eds.): English as a Scientific and Research Language. Debates and Discourses. English in Europe. Boston: de Gruyter Mouton, 9–35. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614516378-004

Bourdieu, Pierre (1996): Die symbolische Gewalt, in: Bourdieu, Pierre/Wacquant, Loïc J. D.: Reflexive Anthropologie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 175-211.

Brunner, Claudia (2017): Von Selbstreflexion zu Hegemonieselbstkritik. In: Sicherheit und Frieden 35(4), 196-201. https://doi.org/10.5771/0175-274X-2017-4-196

Brunner, Claudia (2020): Epistemische Gewalt. Wissen und Herrschaft in der kolonialen Moderne, Bielefeld: Transcript. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839451311

Brunner, Claudia (2021): Conceptualizing epistemic violence. An interdisciplinary assemblage for IR. In: International Politics Reviews (9), 193–212. https://doi. org/10.1057/s41312-021-00086-1

Butler, Judith (2005): Giving an Account of Oneself. New York: Fordham University Press. https://doi.org/10.5422/fso/9780823225033.001.0001

Butler, Judith (2009): Frames of War. When is Life Grievable?, London/New York: Pluto.

Castro Varela, María do Mar (2021): Welt ‚begreifen‘ statt ‚ergreifen‘. Bildungsfragen und Strategien des (Re-)Worlding. In: Journal für Entwicklungspolitik XXXVII (1/2), 91–113.

Coronil, Fernando (1996): Beyond Occidentalism. Toward Nonimperial Geohistorical Categories. In: Cultural Anthropology 11(1), 51-87. https://doi.org/10.1525/ can.1996.11.1.02a00030

Derrida, Jacques (1976): Of Grammatology. Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Dietze, Gabriele (2008): Intersektionalität und Hegemonie(selbst)kritik. In: Gippert, Wolfgang/Götte, Petra/Kleinau, Elke (eds.): Transkulturalität. Gender- und bildungshistorische Perspektiven. Bielefeld: Transcript, 27–43. https://doi. org/10.14361/9783839409794-001

Dotson, Kristie (2014): Conceptualizing Epistemic Oppression. In: Social Epistemology 28(2), 115–138. https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2013.782585

Dussel, Énrique (2013): Der Gegendiskurs der Moderne. Kölner Vorlesungen. Wien: Turia + Kant.

Federici, Silvia (2004): Caliban and the Witch. Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. New York: Autonomedia.

Foucault, Michel (1973): Archäologie des Wissens. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Frazer, Elizabeth/Hutchings, Kimberly (2008): On Politics and Violence. Arendt contra Fanon. In: Contemporary Political Theory 7(1), 90–108. https://doi. org/10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300328

Fricker, Miranda (2007): Epistemic Injustice. Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof :oso/9780198237907.001.0001

Galtung, Johan (1969): Violence, Peace, and Peace Research. In: Journal of Peace Research 6(3), 167-191. https://doi.org/10.1177/002234336900600301

Grosfoguel, Ramón (2008): Transmodernity, border thinking, and global coloniality. Decolonizing political economy and postcolonial studies. www.eurozine. com/transmodernity-border-thinking-and-global-coloniality/, 15.5.2023.

Grosfoguel, Ramón (2013): The Structure of Knowledge in Westernized Universities. Epistemic Racism/Sexism and the Four Genocides/Epistemicides of the Long 16th Century. In: Human Architecture. Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge XI(1), 73–90.

Gruffydd Jones, Branwen (2006) (ed.): Decolonizing International Relations. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.

Imbusch, Peter (2002): Der Gewaltbegriff. In: Heitmeyer, Wilhelm/Hagan, John (eds.): Internationales Handbuch der Gewaltforschung. Wiesbaden: West- deutscher Verlag, 26–57. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-322-80376-4_2

Kuch, Hannes/Herrmann, Steffen K. (2010) (eds.): Philosophien sprachlicher Gewalt. Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft.

Lander, Edgardo (2000): Eurocentrism and Colonialism in Latin American Social Thought- In: Nepantla. Views from South 1(3), 519–532.

Maldonado-Torres, Nelson (2007): On the Coloniality of Being. Contributions to the Development of a Concept. In: Cultural Studies 21(2-3), 240–270. https:// doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162548

Maldonado-Torres, Nelson (2008): Against War. Views from the Underside of Modernity. Durham: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11s- mnhg

Mignolo, Walter D. (2009): Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and De-Colonial Freedom. In: Theory, Culture & Society 26(7-8), 1-23. https://doi. org/10.1177/0263276409349275

Nixon, Rob (2013): Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press.

Quíjano, Aníbal (2000): Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America. In: Nepantla. Views from South 1(3), 533-580. https://doi. org/10.1177/0268580900015002005

Quijano, Aníbal (2007): Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality. In: Cultural Studies 21(2-3), 168–178. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601164353

Quintero, Pablo/Garbe, Sebastian (2012) (eds.): Kolonialität der Macht. De/koloniale Konflikte zwischen Theorie und Praxis.

Regener, Susanne (2010): Visuelle Gewalt. Menschenbilder aus der Psychiatrie des 20. Jahrhunderts. Bielefeld: Transcript. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839404201

Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2014): Epistemologies of the South. Justice against Epistemicide. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers.

Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2018): The End of the Cognitive Empire. The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South. Durham: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478002000

Shilliam, Robbie (2011) (ed.): International Relations and Non-Western Thought. Imperialism, Colonialism and Investigations of Global Modernity. London: Routledge.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1988): Can the Subaltern Speak? In: Carry, Nelson/ Grossberg, Lawrence (eds.): Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 271–313.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (2012): An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization, Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press.

Torres Heredia, Marcela (2021): From Absences to the Ecologies of Knowledges. Colonial and Decolonial Aspirations in the Scholarly Communication System. In: Journal für Entwicklungspolitik XXXVIII (1/2), 114–151.

Vázquez, Rolando (2011): Translation as Erasure. Thoughts on Modernity’s Epistemic Violence. In: Journal of Historical Sociology 24(1), 27–44. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-6443.2011.01387.x

Viaene, Lieselotte/Laranjeiro, Catarina/Tom, Miye Nadya (2023): The walls spoke when no one else would. In: Pritchard, Erin/Edwards, Delyth (eds.): Sexual Misconduct in the Academia. An Ethics of Care in the University, London: Routdledge, 208-225. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003289944-17