Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-zzh7m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T06:47:29.240Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Toward a Revaluation of Ignorance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Cynthia Townley
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The development of nonoppressive ways of knowing other persons, often across significantly different social positions, is an important project within feminism. An account of epistemic responsibility attentive to feminist concerns is developed here through a critique of epistemophilia—the love of knowledge to the point of myopia and its concurrent ignoring of ignorance. Identifying a positive role for ignorance yields an enhanced understanding of responsible knowledge practices.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 21 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Feminist Epistemologies of Ignorance , Summer 2006 , pp. 37 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baier, Annette. 1986. Trust and anti‐trust. 32 96: 231–60.Google Scholar
Bell, Diane, and Nelson, Topsy Napurrula. 1989. Speaking about rape is everybody's business. Women's Studies International Forum 12 (4): 403–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coady, C. A. J. 1992. Testimony. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Code, Lorraine. 1987. Epistemic responsibility. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England.Google Scholar
Code, Lorraine. 1991. What can she know? Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Code, Lorraine. 1995. Rhetorical spaces: Essays on gendered locations. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Davis, Dawn Rae. 2002. (Love is) the ability of not knowing: Feminist experience of the impossible in ethical singularity. Hypatia 17 (2): 145–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Driver, Julia. 1989. The virtues of ignorance. Journal of Philosophy 86 (7): 373–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1972. The archaeology of knowledge. Trans. Smith, Sheridan. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Fricker, Miranda. 2003. Epistemic injustice and a role for virtue in the politics of knowing Metaphilosophy 34 (1–2): 154–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frye, Marilyn. 1983. The Politics of Reality. Freedom, Calif.: The Crossing Press.Google Scholar
Goldman, Alvin. 1999. Knowledge in a social world. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hooks, Bell. 1984. Feminist theory from margin to center. Boston: South End Press.Google Scholar
Huggins, JackieWillmot, JoTarrago, IsabeWilletts, KathyBond, LizHolt, LillianBourke, Eleanor, Bin‐Salik, Maryann, Fowell, Pat, Schmider, Joann, Craigie, Valerie, and McBride‐Levi, Linda. 1991. Letter to the editors. Women's studies International Forum 14 (5): 506–7.Google Scholar
Lugones, María. 1987. Playfulness, “world”‐traveling and loving perception. Hypatia 2 (2): 3–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mann, Anika. 2004. Feminist standpoint theory: Intersections of race and gender. Ethics and Epistemologies of Ignorance Conference, Penn State University.Google Scholar
Moreton‐Robinson, Aileen. 2003. Tiddas talkin’ up to the white woman: When Huggins et al. took on Bell. In Blacklines: Contemporary critical writing by indigenous Australians, ed. Grossman, Michele. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1973. A theory of justice. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Potter, Nancy Nyquist. 2002. How can I be trusted? Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Rooney, Phyllis. 2004. Knowing well: Rethinking epistemic normativity. Ethics and Epistemologies of Ignorance Conference, Penn State University.Google Scholar
Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. 1999. Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Townley, Cynthia. 2003. Trust and the curse of Cassandra. Philosophy in the Contemporary World Fall‐Winter: 105–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Patricia. 1993. The alchemy of race and rights. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar