A: Alternative Epistemologies (Convenor: Dr Tara Talwar Windsor)
This course offers an intersectional introduction to thinking about narrative, power, and knowledge. In the first two seminars we will discuss theories of how race, class, gender, and other power relations determine what is 鈥榢nown鈥�, exploring Mills鈥� and others鈥� understanding of epistemology as a 鈥榩rivileged universalization of the experience and outlook of a very limited (particularistic) sector of humanity 鈥� largely white, male, and propertied鈥� (Mills, 1988). We will also explore the development of the concept of epistemic injustice. In the second two seminars we will then address the possibilities and problems of alternative epistemologies and modes of narrative resistance.听
Participants are invited to bring their own experience and ideas to the seminar and to suggest additional or alternative reading.听
Background/introductory reading: Sarah Colvin and Stephanie Galasso, 鈥楥hanging the Story: Epistemic Shifts and Creative Agency鈥�, in Colvin and Galasso (eds), Epistemic Injustice and Creative Agency. Global Perspectives on Literature and Film. New York: Routledge 2023, 1-20
Seminar 1. Narrative and power
Michel Foucault, 鈥淭wo Lectures鈥� (1976) in Foucault, Power/Knowledge. Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-77, ed. Colin Gordon. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf 1980, 78-108. E-book: https://monoskop.org/images/5/5d/Foucault_Michel_Power_Knowledge_Selected_Interviews_and_Other_Writings_1972-1977.pdf听
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 鈥楥an the Subaltern Speak?鈥� (1988); reprinted in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester, 1993, 66-111听
Lorraine Code, 鈥楩eminist Epistemology and the Politics of Knowledge: Questions of Marginality鈥� (2014), in The Sage Handbook of Feminist Theory, ed. Mary Evans et al. Los Angeles: Sage 2014, 9-25. Available online: https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9781473907348_A24885901/preview-9781473907348_A24885901.pdf#page=36听
Ken Plummer, 鈥溾�榃hose side are we on?鈥� revisited: Narrative Power, Narrative Inequality, and a Politics of Narrative Humanity鈥� in Symbolic Interaction (2019). Available online: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/symb.449听
Seminar 2. Epistemic Injustice
Charles Mills, 鈥淲hite Ignorance,鈥� in Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, edited by Shannon Sullivan, and Nancy Tuana, State University of New York Press 2007, 13-38
Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice. Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007
Luvell Anderson, 鈥淓pistemic Injustice and the Philosophy of Race鈥�, in Ian James Kidd, Jos茅 Medina, and Gaile Pohlhaus Jr (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice. London: Routledge 2019 (2017), 139-48
Seminar 3. Alternative Epistemologies
Charles Mills, 鈥淎lternative Epistemologies鈥�, Social Theory and Practice 14 (1988), Special Issue: Marxism Feminism: Powers of Theory/Theories of Power 237-63听
Jonathan O. Chimakonam, 鈥楢frican philosophy and global epistemic injustice鈥�. Journal of Global Ethics 13 (2017): 120-37听
Jos茅 Medina, 鈥淓pistemic Injustice and Epistemologies of Ignorance鈥�. In Paul C. Taylor, Linda Mart铆n Alcoff, Luvell Anderson (eds), The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Race. New York: Routledge 2018, 247-60听
Patricia Hill Collins, 鈥淚ntersectionality and Epistemic Injustice鈥�, in Ian James Kidd, Jos茅 Medina, and Gaile Pohlhaus Jr, The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice. London: Routledge 2017, 115-26
Seminar 4. Narrative / Resistance
Jos茅 Medina, 鈥淭oward a Foucaultian Epistemology of Resistance: Counter-Memory, Epistemic Friction, and Guerilla Pluralism鈥�, in Foucault Studies 12 (2011), 9-35
Jos茅 Medina, The Epistemology of Resistance. Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013
Amy Allen, 鈥淧ower/Knowledge/Resistance: Foucault and Epistemic Injustice鈥�, in Ian James Kidd, Jos茅 Medina, and Gaile Pohlhaus Jr (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice. London: Routledge 2019 (2017),187-94 听
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