In my dissertation, Knowing How to Feel: mapping affective epistemologies of ignorance through numbness, I examine the ways by which numbness contributes to harmful “epistemic resilience,” or the phenomenon whereby systems of meaning remain stable despite counter evidence or attempts to alter them (Dotson 2014). I am most importantly concerned with the dehumanizing power of such numbness, which works through engaging people (including ourselves) as objects (of fear, paranoia, judgment, etc), rather than as complex persons with our/their own needs for charitable and open interpretation. Furthermore, the project considers how we might combat such numbness through the development of emotional and other affective capacities using art, and especially storytelling. The overall aim is to create new interdisciplinary conversations between epistemologists of ignorance and decolonial feminists. Knowing How to Feel is divided into four separate but interrelated chapters. I’ll give a brief outline of each. In Chapter One, Racism, Resilience, and Affective Resistance (forthcoming Hypatia 36, no. 4), I give my account of numbness, offering six disjunctive characteristics. I then explore two ways that numbness perpetuates harmful epistemic resilience, namely, through the persistence of stereotypes, and “epistemic appropriation” (Davis 2018). I argue that Kantian “disinterestedness” might provide a helpful tool for efforts of affective resistance. Chapter Two, Curdled Contracts (forthcoming in Truth to Power: The Philosophy of Charles Mills), thinks about these themes of numbness and resilience as they relate to academic philosophy, specifically in the context of social contract theory. I use deep textual engagement to interpret Charles Mills’ notions of “the Domination Contract” and “white ignorance” in the context of María Lugones’ work on purity and curdled logics. I argue that employing methodological insights from decolonial feminisms, ones which have not yet received much uptake by Mills, might deepen the liberatory potential of his apparatus. In Chapter Three, Grieving Ghosts, I situate the discussion of resilience and numbness in our everyday lives. Drawing on the work of Shannon Sullivan, I consider numbness as an unconscious habit of racial privilege that permeates resilient and dehumanizing understandings of self and world. I think about how we might resist such habits through the kind of “grief work” some storytelling provides. Finally, in Chapter Four, NOA: a music film, I bring the previous chapters together by embodying their theoretical commitments with my own storytelling, combatting numbness through encouraging an experience of deep feeling.

Creator

• Rogers, Taylor Ann

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-wwpw-jy28

Subject

• Gender studies
• Black studies
• Epistemology

Language

• en

Alternate Identifier

• http://dissertations.umi.com/northwestern:15805
• etdadmin_upload_853183

Keyword

• Charles Mills
• political epistemology
• critical race theory
• epistemologies of ignorance
• decolonial feminism
• affective ignorance

Date created

• 2021-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright