Toward a Foucaultian Epistemology of Resistance: Counter-Memory, Epistemic Friction, and <i>Guerrilla</i> Pluralism

Forfattere

  • José Medina Vanderbilt University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i12.3335

Resumé

In this paper I argue that Foucaultian genealogy offers a critical approach to practices of remembering and forgetting which is crucial for resisting oppression and dominant ideologies. For this argument I focus on the concepts of counter-history and counter-memory that Foucault developed in the 1970’s. In the first section I analyze how the Foucaultian approach puts practices of remembering and forgetting in the context of power relations, focusing not only on what is remembered and forgotten, but how, by whom, and with what effects. I highlight the critical possibilities for resistance that this approach opens up, and I illustrate them with Ladelle McWhorter’s genealogy of racism in Anglo-America. In the second section I put the Foucaultian approach in conversation with contemporary work in pragmatism and critical theory on the social epistemology of memory. In the third and final section, I explore some of the implications of the Foucaultian notion of resistance and what I term guerrilla pluralism for contemporary epistemological discussions of ignorance in standpoint theory and race theory

Forfatterbiografi

José Medina, Vanderbilt University

José Medina is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University and Distinguished Chair in the Humanities at the Carlos III University (Madrid, Spain). He works primarily in Philosophy of Language, Social Epistemology, and Political Philosophy, with a special focus on gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. He is the author of Speaking from Elsewhere (SUNY Press, 2006), Language: Key Concepts in Philosophy (Continuum, 2005), and The Unity of Wittgenstein’s Philosophy (SUNY Press, 2002). His forthcoming book is entitled The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and the Social Imagination. He has published numerous articles in journals such as Dialectica, Inquiry, Metaphilosophy, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Social Epistemology, etc.

Downloads

Publiceret

2011-09-12

Citation/Eksport

Medina, J. (2011). Toward a Foucaultian Epistemology of Resistance: Counter-Memory, Epistemic Friction, and <i>Guerrilla</i> Pluralism. Foucault Studies, (12), 9–35. https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i12.3335

Nummer

Number 12, October 2011: Foucault and Race

Sektion

Special Issue on Foucault and Race

Licens

Authors retain copyright to their work, but assign the right of the first publication to Foucault Studies. The work is subject to a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, but despite these restrictions, authors can take for granted that Foucault Studies will permit articles published in Foucault Studies to be translated or reprinted in another format such as a book providing a full reference is made to Foucault Studies as the original place of publication.