Abstract:Shani Mootoo's Cereus Blooms at Night demonstrates how willful and strategic epistemologies of ignorance intertwine. By rejecting a compartmentalized approach to domination, Mootoo highlights the disjuncture between idealized images offamily, home, love, and the Caribbean and traumatic events of personal and cultural history. Mootoo not only asks readers to take up resistant questioning, argues May, but also to recognize that epistemology must acknowledge unspeakable and silenced stories to adequately account … Show more
“…These comments suggest the complexity and difficulty of the problem of ignorance and the importance of understanding ignorance. Ignorance as we use it here is not a matter of faulty individual cognition or a collective absence of knowledge yet to be acquired, but an outcome of structural methods of not‐knowing deeply linked to significant social inequalities (Mills ; Bergin ; May ; Sullivan and Tuana ; Steyn ; Schaefli and Godlewska ; Zwierlein ). Examples of these responses include: I didn't realize how little I knew until I did this test.…”
Section: What the Students Think Of The Questionnaire And Testmentioning
Key Messages
When invited to identify what they know about Aboriginal people, Memorial students reveal racism and stereotypes, and cannot describe the specificity and diversity of Aboriginal peoples in Canada.
Those able to perform best on our test tend to be less prejudiced.
Although the students perform badly on our test, most consider it a good measure of their knowledge.
“…These comments suggest the complexity and difficulty of the problem of ignorance and the importance of understanding ignorance. Ignorance as we use it here is not a matter of faulty individual cognition or a collective absence of knowledge yet to be acquired, but an outcome of structural methods of not‐knowing deeply linked to significant social inequalities (Mills ; Bergin ; May ; Sullivan and Tuana ; Steyn ; Schaefli and Godlewska ; Zwierlein ). Examples of these responses include: I didn't realize how little I knew until I did this test.…”
Section: What the Students Think Of The Questionnaire And Testmentioning
Key Messages
When invited to identify what they know about Aboriginal people, Memorial students reveal racism and stereotypes, and cannot describe the specificity and diversity of Aboriginal peoples in Canada.
Those able to perform best on our test tend to be less prejudiced.
Although the students perform badly on our test, most consider it a good measure of their knowledge.
“…To produce such phenomenal and sustained ignorance of racism and white domination, white people perform ‘carefully crafted methods of not knowing’ (May, , p. 109). Such epistemic practices include cognitive, perceptive and affective processes on a spectrum including ‘misunderstanding, misrepresentation, evasion, self‐deception, historical amnesia, and moral rationalization’ (Mills, , p. 190).…”
Section: White Ignorancementioning
confidence: 99%
“…Thus, ignorance involves denying the epistemic authority of others through active ‘hostility toward the testimony and credibility of non‐white people’ (Sullivan and Tuana, , p. 3). Systemically, some ‘knowers’ and understandings of the world are heard and others marginalized or derided (May, ). As Vivian May writes: There are many things those in dominant groups are taught not to know, encouraged not to see, and the privileged are rewarded for this state of not‐knowing.…”
Responding to the call to theorize praxis in relation to philosophy and white diversity research, I draw on philosophers of race, and in particular collective white ignorance, and generous encounters to argue for listening as a form of progressive white praxis. While praxis has been theorized in feminist theory in relation to knowledge, standpoint and bodies, literature neglects how whiteness structures the production of knowledge and praxis. I argue that an understanding of white praxis should entail an examination of white epistemology, white ignorance and encounters with the stranger. At the same time, heeding critical race theorists’ cautions about critical whiteness studies and white feminism, I propose ways in which listening could begin to work as a form of white praxis responding to racism in research on diversity and organizations.
“…Settler ignorance is willful in the sense that, regardless of intention or impact, it is sanctioned, explicitly taught, and rewarded (Forget and Panayotova ; Dion ; Cherubini ; Godlewska et al ; Lindsay ). It is maintained by historic operational practices rooted in particular methods of perception, and is institutionalized and promoted through law, education, political structures, and popular modes of representation, thereby permitting the epistemically privileged the denial of their exclusionary bias (Bergin ; May ). Willful ignorance, whether conscious or not, is strategic.…”
Ignorance is linked to colonialism and is deeply implicated in the maintenance of unequal social relations. The authors theorize ignorance as structural and self-interested, and undertake a geographically sensitive analysis of Quebec's 2007 Bouchard-Taylor Commission to demonstrate how ignorance of Aboriginal realities works strategically to sustain unequally occupied rhetorical and material space. The Bouchard-Taylor Commission was a public inquiry into Quebec citizens' opinions on the degree to which cultural difference should be accommodated in the province. Through both geographic decisions about where to hold public meetings and in its very mandate, the Commission restricted participation to Quebecers of French-Canadian descent and immigrants of long and more recent standing. The authors analyze how the law, and ignorance of how it applies to Aboriginal peoples, was mobilized by the Commissioners to create a space from which Aboriginal peoples could be excluded, and highlight the continuity of this strategy with past debates over Quebec identity. The case of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission demonstrates how ignorance operates in highly sophisticated and often readily justifiable ways to uphold settler interests.L'ignorance et les géographies historiques de l'exclusion autochtone : éléments de preuve découlant de la commission Bouchard-Taylor sur les accommodements raisonnables tenue en 2007Alors qu'il existe une interdépendance entre le colonialisme et l'ignorance, celle-ci est également fortement associée au maintien de relations sociales inégales. Partant de la théorie que l'ignorance est innée et fondée sur un intérêt personnel, les auteurs inscrivent l'analyse de la commission Bouchard-Taylor du Québec tenue en 2007 dans une perspective géographique en vue de mettre en évidence de quelle manière l'ignorance de la réalité autochtone découle d'une stratégie visant à maintenir une occupation inégale de l'espace rhétorique et matériel. La commission Bouchard-Taylor a été mise sur pied dans le but de mener une enquête publique auprès des citoyens du Québec pour recueillir leurs avis pour savoir dans quelle mesure les différences d'ordre culturel devraient faire l'objet d'accommodements dans la province. Autant par les décisions de nature géographique au sujet des endroits choisis pour tenir les audiences publiques que par son propre mandat, la Commission a limité la participation aux Québécois de descendance canadienne-française et aux immigrants récents et de longue date. L'analyse porte ensuite sur la loi et comment les commissaires ont pu tirer parti de l'ignorance de la manière dont elle s'applique aux peuples autochtones pour générer un espace qui pouvait les exclure. Les auteurs soulignent à quel point cette stratégie se situe dans la continuité avec les débats précédents qui ont eu lieu sur l'identité du Québec. La commission Bouchard-Taylor fournit un exemple de
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