Theorizing Epistemic Violence

My research project in political theory aims at tying together two strands of theorizing power/knowledge relations as viewed through the lens of the notion of epistemic violence. Broad concepts of violence from within the Western canon, which have left their traces in political science (e.g. structural, symbolic, discursive violence), will be confronted with the critique of the constitutive coloniality of scholarly knowledge and its far-reaching effects offered by recent post- and decolonial theory. Two research desiderata emerge at this node formed by my specific research interest. First, there is a lack of epistemological reflection in a wide range of Western accounts of violence on the one hand, and second, there are references missing to existing theories about violence within post- and decolonial research which basically deals with the preconditions, functions and consequences of (scholarly) knowledge for globally asymmetric relations of power, dominance and ultimately, violence. Disposing of a theory of epistemic violence which takes into account the violent character of modernity itself will allow for links to be made between narrower understandings of political violence on the one hand and the Eurocentric traditions of globally dominant scientific and academic knowledge production on the other. The notion of epistemic violence had already been used by Derrida and Foucault, when Spivak transposed it into postcolonial studies at the end of the 1980s in order to point at the problematic and constitutive entanglements between colonial and imperial policies and scholarly knowledge production that have been shaping the world to this very day without being explicitly named as such. Even though the term has been present in post- and decolonial writings ever since, there is no systematic theory about epistemic violence available as yet. This is a significant gap which I intend to fill by way of my theory-oriented basic research, being poised at the crossroads of political theory and sociology of knowledge, including post- and decolonial work from the humanities and cultural studies. Towards this aim, I will in a first step collate and assess existing uses of the term epistemic violence across different disciplines and fields of research. The second part of my analysis consists in analyzing existing wide concepts about violence that have been emerging mainly across the social sciences during the last decades. After having critically discussed classic works about cultural and structural violence provided by Galtung, and about symbolic violence by Bourdieu, I will proceed towards more recent accounts of visual, linguistic, discursive and normative violence. In a third phase, I will finally integrate important works from post- and decolonial theory that have dealt with the intersections between political and epistemic violence and their impact for globally asymmetric power relations.

Violence is not only an event, but also a process and a relationship. It not only destroys order, but also establishes it and maintains it. In most debates on violence, little importance is attached to the dimension of knowledge, as it is considered the opposite of or as an antidote to violence. With the concept of epistemic violence, Claudia Brunner focuses on the constitutive connection between knowledge, domination and violence in colonial modernity, our present. Starting out from feminist, post- and decolonial theory, she develops a transdisciplinary concept of epistemic violence in an examination of structural, cultural, symbolic and normative violence. In order to confront the inequalities of the present, we must start from the political and epistemic foundations of modernity and the colonialism that still persists today. Marginalised theoretical traditions of resistive knowledge must be put into relation to each other. The theorisation of epistemic violence focuses on the preconditions and consequences of our knowledge in the context of European colonialism and the capitalist world system. To problematize epistemic violence means to challenge the privilege of Euro- and androcentric knowledge production, even beyond an analysis and critique of obvious relations of violence. Post- and decolonial, indigenous and feminist debates have been doing so for a long time. Science still has a lot to learn from them, including, by the way, criticism of power. Transdisciplinary conceptual work, such as the one Claudia Brunner has done in her research project, makes an important contribution to this.