Veli Mitova

Veli Mitova is a South African philosopher, Professor in Philosophy and Director of the African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science (ACEPS) at the University of Johannesburg.

Quotes

• If these thoughts are on the right track, at least three concepts in the post-Fricker literature on epistemic injustice can help us theorise epistemic decolonisation in good ways, i.e. ways that meet the desiderata for just use of epistemic injustice tools. Moreover, these three concepts aren’t lone outliers in a sea of useless and WPS-prone concepts. On the contrary, they are related to many other concepts in the literature that are equally theoretically fruitful and attuned to the desiderata inspired by the WPS challenge.Footnote22 Instead of pursuing this line, which is bound to turn tedious given the size of the literature, I wish to conclude by addressing a concern that the reader may have had throughout the discussion so far.
  • [1]
• A plausible worry with my argument is that the very fact that I am a white person based at an academic institution automatically means that the epistemic injustice tools I am using are likely to fail at least the second and third desiderata on good use of epistemic injustice concepts. They may be thought to violate the second because given my identity and institution-base, whatever version of the epistemic oppression tool I am using is both institutionalised and bound to serve dominant, white, interests. And given my belonging to the oppressor’s social group, the use of this tool is bound to adopt the perspective of the oppressor.
  • [2]
• Let me start by saying what wouldn’t be a good reply – pointing to the fact that I am based in South Africa, where political power is in the hands of the victims of colonialism. The reason this reply won’t do is that it is a terrible mistake to assume that the event of political decolonisation amounts to epistemic decolonisation. Although the event of political decolonisation is long past, as discussed in section 2, epistemic decolonisation is a dynamic and ongoing process, which has still a long way to go. Hence, individual academic institutions have a long way to go. This means that the larger institution of academia still allows for the bad, un-decolonised institutionalisation of epistemic resources and the systematic favouring of the perspective of the oppressor. The fact that the 2015 Rhodes Must Fall movement started in South Africa bears witness to this.
  • [3]
• Although this quick reply doesn’t work, I don’t think that the objector’s worry is warranted at least in the context of the argument of this paper. Suppose that it was indeed inevitable that a white academic perpetuates the institutionalisation of these tools in ways that favour dominant interests and privilege the oppressor’s perspective. (I don’t think that this is the case, but let us suppose it is.) This would still not threaten the present argument, because I am not in fact using these tools. Instead, I am setting constraints – developed by non-dominant knowers – for good ways of using such tools. Whether I can use them myself in these ways is a moot point. (If the objector is right, I can’t.) But I hope to have at least persuaded the reader that they can be used in these ways to advance the project of epistemic decolonisation. I take this as a big win in light of increasing WPS-style doubts about some of the epistemic injustice literature.
  • [4]