Temporality in epistemic justice

Abstract

Democracy requires some sort of exchange of knowledge between holders of different knowledge positions. The concept of epistemic justice brings the ability to know and the right to be recognised as a knowledgeable person under a scheme of justice. It problematises social conditions that potentially compromise the ability to share knowledge and thereby effectuate change and the possibility of being recognised as a knowing subject and being granted access to equitable means of producing knowledge. This paper engages with temporal aspects of epistemic justice. What role do temporalities play in people’s possibilities to create knowledge and the way they create knowledge? What role does time play in the valuation and circulation of knowledges? How do hegemonic conceptions of time potentially make some knowledges circulate more freely than others? Since conceptions of time connect to specific forms of knowledge, hierarchies and speakabilities of temporalities form an immediate correlate of hierarchies of knowledge. By extension, such hierarchies feed into schemes of epistemic justice. Thus, democracy’s duty to emancipate suppressed voices requires emancipating the times from which those suppressed voices speak.

Teaching temporal reflexivity through a vehicle: Experiential-existential time around the wood fire stove of a mobile shepherd's hut

“…Therefore, it is vital to think about how the times that structure social practices are, in fact, supportive or detrimental to specific ways of knowing. (Valkenburg, 2022: 441).…”

“…The pedagogical on-the-road-ness and public visibility of this ‘outdoor classroom’ asks questions about the civic dimension of teaching time. How can we ‘secure a democratic accommodating of multiplicities of times’ (Valkenburg, 2022: 449) which can be immersive, open-ended, full of wonder and surprise?…”

“…The cosiness of the shepherd's hut was intended as a pedagogy of temporal discomforts, as a subtle form of unsettling. I therefore invited research participants to wander off into their own existential perception of journeying with time, in the hope that this freedom may reveal something ‘more fundamental than mere acceleration or deceleration’ (Valkenburg, 2022: 448), providing a space to unlearn these established antagonisms and dichotomies.…”

Acid attacks and epistemic (in)justice: Violence, everyday resistance and hermeneutical responsibilities in the Indian Hindi film Chhapaak

“…to factors unrelated to their inherent abilities. Epistemic injustice refers to the inequitable treatment experienced within knowledge-based and communicative systems, wherein the perspectives, lived experiences, and concerns of disadvantaged persons, groups, and societies are disregarded or undervalued (Fricker, 2007;Valkenburg, 2022).…”

Interdisciplinary Notes on the Dual Nature of Disability: Disrupting Ideology–Ontology Circuits in Racial Disparities Research

“…These approaches and representations promise to inform a richer and situated understanding of learning difficulties across subgroups of learners and contexts. I should also note that this line of research will contribute to epistemic justice by recognizing students of color as knowledgeable individuals and by opening windows into students' abilities to know across situations and settings (Valkenburg, 2022). It follows, therefore, that a core challenge for the LD field will be to elucidate the cultural and historical conditions in which this classification is used-that is, "Who gets called LD, when, by whom, and with what results" (McDermott et al, 2006, p. 16; see also Philip et al, 2018).…”