Epistemologies of Discomfort: What Military-Family Anti-War Activists Can Teach Us About Knoweldge of Violence

Authors

  • Shari Stone-Mediatore Ohio Wesleyan University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26522/ssj.v4i1.1007

Keywords:

epistemic authority, feminist epistemology, institutionalized violence, engaged knowledges

Abstract

This paper extends feminist critiques of epistemic authority by examining their particular relevance in contexts of institutionalized violence. By reading feminist criticism of "experts" together with theories of institutionalized violence, I argue that typical expert modes of thinking are incapable of rigorous knowledge of institutionalized violence because such knowledge requires a distinctive kind of thinking-within-discomfort for which conventionally trained experts are ill-suited. I turn to a newly active group of epistemic agents-anti-war relatives of soldiers-to examine the role that undervalued epistemic traits can play in knowledge of war and other forms of structural violence.

Author Biography

Shari Stone-Mediatore, Ohio Wesleyan University

Associate Professor of Philosophy

Ohio Wesleyan University

Author of Reading Across Borders: Storytelling and Knowledges of Resistance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) as well as various articles on feminist theory, Hannah Arendt, and the politics of knowledge.

 

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Published

2010-03-12

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 1 (2010): Just Reason

Section

Thematic Articles

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Articles are published in Studies in Social Justice under the Creative Commons "Attribution/Non-Commercial/No Derivative Works" Canada licence.

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