Abstract

While many forms of violence shape the global world order, the disciplines devoted to international politics are often content with reductionist concepts of violence; knowledge and knowledge production are more often than not seen as altogether antithetical to direct and physical harm. At the same time, global entanglements of knowledge with violence have increasingly come into view in the course of the ongoing (de-)colonial turn. After more than 30 years, Gayatri C. Spivak’s feminist postcolonial understanding of epistemic violence is still the preeminent theoretical touchstone for addressing this issue. By providing an interdisciplinary understanding of lesser known conceptions of epistemic violence, I open up additional routes for deploying the term in the analysis, theorization, and critique of international politics. Based on this assemblage, I frame epistemic violence along the decolonial concept of a coloniality of power, knowledge, and Being and finally consider how we can possibly undo epistemic violence while un/doing IR.

Details

Title
Conceptualizing epistemic violence: an interdisciplinary assemblage for IR
Author
Brunner, Claudia 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 University of Klagenfurt, Centre for Peace Research and Peace Education, Department of Educational Science, Klagenfurt, Austria (GRID:grid.7520.0) (ISNI:0000 0001 2196 3349) 
Pages
193-212
Publication year
2021
Publication date
Jun 2021
Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan
ISSN
20502982
e-ISSN
20502990
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2545001979
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2021. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.