As part of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology Colloquium Series, Cara-Julie Kather presents: "Hidden Violence? On Injustice and Violence in Knowledge-Making and day-to-day Interpretation".

Title: Hidden Violence? On Injustice and Violence in Knowledge-Making and day-to-day Interpretation

Abstract: How are power and knowledge connected? Who has access to being understood as a knower? Who has access to best understanding their own lived experience? And what does it mean to ‘not understand’ something that happens to oneself or someone else?
It is questions such as these that have been the cocern in studies on ‘Epistemic Injustice’ and ‘Epistemic Violence.’ Both terms describe a form of injustice/violence that is specifically linked to the sphere of knowledge and questions of knowing.

This talk will give an accessible and interdisciplinary introduction into these discourses, focusing on Miranda Frickers notion of ‘hermeneutical injustice.’ These introductory impulses will be followed by a collection of different dimensions, possible fields, and potential interdisciplinary points of connection, that can derive from discourses on Epistemic Injustice and Epistemic Violence.

Bio: Cara-Julie Kather is a feminist theorist and writer from Germany. She is currently conducting PhD research on mathematics as a form of epistemic violence. Her writing includes academic as well as nonacademic works and all the inbetweens and beyonds to those categories. Kather’s research next to her PhD project focuses on sexual violence, neurodiversity, disability, and decolonial feminisms. Her first book in English appears in November 2024 with Fuente Fountain Books. Other works can be found with transcript, Polylog, Unrast, Text Power Telling or the Journal of Ecohumanism.