But while Princeton's decision is welcome, it is merely one of many steps the discipline of political science must take in order to reckon with its explicit and implicit epistemic violence. When the French government and its elites were debating the merits of domination as opposed to partial colonisation of Algeria, Tocqueville wrote, in his 1841, Essay on Algeria, an unequivocal endorsement of a full-on colonisation. What these awards do is, like statues and buildings' names, institutionalise epistemic violence. At the most basic level, epistemic violence is about dominant systems of knowledge oppressing "other" knowledge structures and normalising a common sense that is inherently violent and unjust. Repairing epistemic violence has got to be a long and challenging path, given how deeply rooted it is and far back it goes, but it is necessary.

Source: The North Africa Journal July 07, 2020 12:22 UTC