Towards Epistemic Justice: On Translation as Epistemic Disobedience, Insurrection, Resistance, and Activism

Abstract

As a Syrian-Arab-Canadian researcher, pedagogue, and racialized Woman of Color, I continue to grapple with the notion of the production of knowledge on the Arab subject and the ethics (or lack thereof) involved in this production—a knowledge that has come to be epistemologized, legitimized, canonized, institutionalized, and universalized. As importantly, it is a knowledge that insists on creating an “epistemic divide” that Others, dichotomizes, and polarizes Arab subjects in the West.  In particular, I am concerned with how knowledge on the Arab subject is constituted, negated or simply dismissed in Western epistemology, with what counts as knowledge, and as importantly, with how we, as Arabs, can engage with “epistemic activism” to disrupt hegemonic Western Knowledge systems where “epistemic racism” is rampant in both social academic and institutional spheres.