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

• Main Author: Shari Stone-Mediatore
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Brock University 2010-03-01
• Series: Studies in Social Justice
• Subjects: epistemic authority; feminist epistemology; institutionalized violence; engaged knowledges
• Online Access: http://brock.scholarsportal.info/journals/index.php/SSJ/article/view/1007

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: 93.75pt;"><span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> <p>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.</p> </span></span></p>