Towards epistemic justice

This research will contribute uniquely to the disciplinary development of cross-epistemological studies, focusing in particular on Indigenous and decolonial issues. Past and present settler colonialism as practice and ideology has led to the material and intellectual dispossession of Indigenous peoples and the subjugation of their ways of being and seeing the world. Our research seeks to address the epistemic injustices resulting from unequal distribution and validation of knowledge in universities on a transnational scale. Following the insights of feminist, Indigenous, post- and decolonial as well as queer scholars, we understand epistemic injustices as a de-legitimation and marginalization of minorities’ manners and methods of knowledge production and distribution (cf. Fricker 2007; Kauanui 2018; Mignolo 2009; Santos 2014; Simpson 2014; Wiredu 2002). We posit that, on a social level, epistemic injustice impoverishes the ability to make sense of experiences and their specific situatedness, personal and collective histories, and non-hegemonic forms of relationality to other beings and the environment. This research group addresses problems that can arise when teaching and researching Indigenous and decolonial issues under conditions of hegemony, inequality and injustice, material and immaterial dispossession. Specifically, we tackle the use of Euro-Western knowledge grids when analyzing art and literature by self-reflexively confronting our own analysis with Indigenous and decolonial criticism.