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What is epistemic violence?

To paraphrase Gayatri Spivak, the coiner of the term, epistemic violence is the systematic silencing of Othered (or, in Spivak's term, subaltern) groups via a refusal of the dominant group to hear them, and to understand their knowledge as legible or hearable at all. The effect of this is that marginal knowledges are iced out of dominant discourse.

More recently, philosopher Miranda Fricker has opened up new paths in this area with her book titled Epistemic Injustice. She describes two forms of epistemic injustice (testimonial, in which a knower's testimony is systematically delegitimized, and hermeneutic, in which a knower is not permitted the language with which to describe the conditions under which they live).

When I talk about epistemic injustice, I am thinking about Spivak and Fricker's more recent interventions. Spivak is also drawing on her reading of Foucault, who used the term "biopower" to describe the productive power of state efforts to make [populations] live (in conditions of silence, marginality, toil, etc.) and let them die (by knowingly abandoning the noncompliant –– including those who do not submit to the epistemic conditions required of them).

Sierra DeMulder, Your Love Finds Its Way Back / “what does love mean? see how 4-8 year-old kids describe love” by Ladan Lashkari / Nizar Qabbani, A Green Lantern on Damascus’ Door / Mabel, episode 15: Killing the Moon / Richard Siken, Saying Your Names / E. Kristin Anderson, from “Sleeping Through”

So since it has come up enough times, I'll make another poll to match the first, opposite one

To my people of color: based on how many you feel safe to have open conversations with about race and racism affecting your lives-

This means CURRENTLY! because that was a source of confusion on the last one 😅 White friends CURRENTLY. Not from kindergarten. RIGHT NOW.

To document is to take on a project of cherishing. You decide, over and over, to honor a particular word, record, or memory. As your own work is constantly revised, you review the elements you’ve lifted from other texts again and again, as if rearranging objects in a museum. You are the lone curator of this work. You decide what to display, what to store in the endnotes, what to consign to the dark. Eventually, a permanent collection emerges: items you’ve chosen so many times that the sight of them brings up a flood of associations. These word-objects, polished with repeated cherishing, are your touchstones. Their presence alters your relationship to history, expanding your memory and infusing musty old books and blurry PDF files with a glow.

—Sofia Samatar, The White Mosque: A Memoir

this bombay merchant's character kills me every time bc it's literally how I speak irl too

logged out + deleted everything except tumblr will see u all after I finish reading ten books

Billy Sullivan (American, 1946), Summer Sunday Breakfast, 1984. Ink on paper, 60 x 42 in.

I'm so glad that y'all are so into Monkey Man and the badass hijra priestess army, but friendly reminder that hijra are NOT trans women. Hijra are their own distinct gender; trans women are women. India has both :)

Whenever I have something copied to my clipboard I can feel it. I feel the weight of it on my mouse

i wasn't made to work. i was made to have sex and read books all day every day

by the way ocean vuong is a TENURED PROFESSOR at nyu who dropped the most pathetic and cringe series of instagram stories comparing people criticising his verse for being cringe diaspora poetry to Palestinian poets and Edward Said while his precarious colleagues, undergrads, and grad students are facing arrests and armed police for protesting against Palestinian genocide on campus. Not only he’s a shitty poet he’s also completely spineless and tone deaf 😭

what happened with vuong? :o

honestly it started w me laughing at some people making fun of some excerpt from his book but then HES being annoying too like check his recent ig stories he started off by talking about edward said and academia but then it kind of turned into a rant about how diaspora poets are made fun of ??? so like yeah major side-eye

ocean vuong keeps making it so hard to like him like i didnt care too much about him earlier but im actively side eyeing him now

my first favorite hobby is yapping. second is being extremely quiet and not talking ever at all ever.

yeah im good with what i have (about to explode with yearning)