Epistemic or epistemological violence: dragging the discourse/language
game/phrase universe of the Other across another one that it should not
be held responsible for in order to clobber it. Example: when an
Enlightenment spokesperson calls a post-structuralist a RELATIVIST in
order to dismiss her, this is epistemic violence. Because the
post-structuralist does not recognize the distinction between the
'absolute' and the 'relative.' For her, there is nothing BUT the
relative, and the question is about how to go about negotiating it
ethically.
Lyotard's The Differend is all about epistemic violence--a differend is
a disagreement between two parties who do not share the same rules of
cognition. The resolution of the dispute in the idiom of one of the two
parties would necessarily wrong the other party. Epistemic violence
happens because there is, as Lyotard says, "no universal rule of
judgment between heterogenous genres of discourse," no standard against
which to judge ACROSS genres.
I don't remember Foucault talking about this in these terms, but I may
be wrong. I think Spivak talks about it in some interview.
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D D
D D. Diane Davis D
D Rhetoric and Composition D
D Old Dominion University D
D dddavis@xxxxxxxx D
D http://www.odu.edu/gnusers/davis/ddd.htm D
D D
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game/phrase universe of the Other across another one that it should not
be held responsible for in order to clobber it. Example: when an
Enlightenment spokesperson calls a post-structuralist a RELATIVIST in
order to dismiss her, this is epistemic violence. Because the
post-structuralist does not recognize the distinction between the
'absolute' and the 'relative.' For her, there is nothing BUT the
relative, and the question is about how to go about negotiating it
ethically.
Lyotard's The Differend is all about epistemic violence--a differend is
a disagreement between two parties who do not share the same rules of
cognition. The resolution of the dispute in the idiom of one of the two
parties would necessarily wrong the other party. Epistemic violence
happens because there is, as Lyotard says, "no universal rule of
judgment between heterogenous genres of discourse," no standard against
which to judge ACROSS genres.
I don't remember Foucault talking about this in these terms, but I may
be wrong. I think Spivak talks about it in some interview.
ddd
--
DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
D D
D D. Diane Davis D
D Rhetoric and Composition D
D Old Dominion University D
D dddavis@xxxxxxxx D
D http://www.odu.edu/gnusers/davis/ddd.htm D
D D
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