Of ants and men: epistemic injustice, commitment to truth, and the possibility of outsider critique in education

Abstract

Does the imperative that we ought to try to understand one another make any sense? Presumably not – if it is correct that there are indeed different truths, and that the quest for objectivity is appropriate only in certain cultural contexts. After carefully mapping out the epistemological and ethical terrain, with special reference to the notions of ‘outsider understanding’ (and resistance to this idea), ‘other ways of knowing’ and epistemic injustice, this article presents a case for outsider critique. Education for (rational) belief and commitment (to truth and truthfulness) necessarily includes education for understanding. Given our shared humanity, with many overlapping facets that make up our identities, and considering that the standard arguments against outsider understanding fail to stand up to critical scrutiny, this arguably also paves the way for the possibility of critical interrogation ‘from the outside’. Such interrogation (driven as it may be by a commitment and, indeed, a passion for truth) should display virtues such as sensitivity, patience, perseverance, imagination, empathy and open-mindedness – and should be guided by an honest attempt at understanding.

Keywords::

• epistemic injustice
• outsider critique
• outsider understanding
• truth

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to David Bridges, Paul Smeyers, Carl Anders Säfström and especially to Sharon Todd for their critical observations and helpful suggestions.

Notes

^1. The point of Thomas Nagel's question, ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ (Nagel 1979), is to draw our attention to the fact of the existence of a particular subjective point of view which necessarily always remains beyond the scope of our inquiry, an inquiry which – being objective – cannot, necessarily, assimilate the subjective point of view. Now, anthropomorphic inquiry, inquiry that ‘humanizes’ non-humans, is not a species of ‘subjective’ study, since it involves extrapolation from a human point of view or imagination. Gregor Samsa's experience in Kafka's Metamorphosis constitutes such an example. He does not experience ‘what it is like to be a beetle’ but is a human being trapped inside a beetle's body, with typically human subjectivity. One might appeal to knowledge by analogy (likeness due to function) as well as to knowledge by homology (likeness due to kinship), given facts about our biological constitution and kinship with animals in general and mammals in particular, and how their needs, habits and motives interact holistically. This, however, will – clearly – not do. The point is that, although we can know what it is like for a bat to be afraid (even though our fears might be modified by our possession of language), we cannot know what it is for a bat to be afraid. We can know what it is like to be Dracula the man but not what it is like to be Dracula the vampire bat. ‘What is it like to be…’ necessarily implies that there is a particular (set of) factor(s) beyond the grasp of the one who asks this question. The essential aspect always remains beyond, as it does when I ask: ‘What is it like to be a woman?’, or more specifically, ‘What is it like to be pregnant/to suffer from pre-menstrual tension?’, or when a Caucasian asks: ‘What is it like to be black?’ The difference is that whereas the latter kinds of questions could be answered by women and by blacks (though I am not sure whether their answers could be understood by men and by whites), the question ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ could only be ‘answered’ by bats. It is not only a matter of linguistic competence, but also a matter of the capacity to detect the meaning and relevance of such questions. It is doubtful, for example, whether chimpanzees and gorillas who have been taught sign language, let alone bats, have this capacity. If a lion could speak, he would probably not see the point of describing the subjective character of his experiences.

^2. As we have seen, the contribution by Sall and Bame Nsamenang (who are both advocates of indigenous or ‘Africa-centric educational knowledge’; Bame Nsamenang and Tchombe 2011, 3) constitutes an exception (Sall and Bame-Nsamenang 2011, 87).

^3. Dei (2004, 339) employs the following account:

Indigenous knowledge is knowledge arising with the long-term occupancy of place. … It is knowledge unique to a given culture or society characterized by the common sense ideas, thoughts, values of people formed as a result of the sustained interactions of society, nature and culture[,]

before quoting Roberts's definition of indigenous knowledge as knowledge ‘accumulated by a group of people, not necessarily indigenous, who, by centuries of unbroken residence, develop an in-depth understanding of their particular place in their particular world’ (Dei 2004; Roberts 1998, 59).

^4. ‘Afrikaner’, in the traditional use employed here, refers to ‘white, Afrikaans-speaking South African’.

^5. Formerly (notably at the time of writing the book) dean of the University of Pretoria's Faculty of Education, Jansen is currently the vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State.

^6. It is worth noting the Foucauldean phrase here. I must confess to never ceasing to be amazed at how this kind of confused relativism continues to hold eminent thinkers in thrall.

^7. ‘The idea of a prejudice is most basically that of a pre-judgement where this is most naturally interpreted … as a judgement made or maintained without proper regard to the evidence, and for this reason we should conceive of a prejudice generally as something epistemically culpable’. (Fricker 2007, 32–33)

^8. Fricker borrows the notion of epistemic humiliation from Simone de Beauvoir.

^9. Kabou, in her much-maligned pamphlet ‘Et si l'Afrique refusait le développement?’ (‘And if Africa refused development?’; Kabou 1991), blames not only power-crazy heads of state and the corrupt elites for the plight of the continent, but also ordinary people, each and every individual. According to Kabou, Africans still believe that the world owes them salvation of the continent, as belated compensation for past injustices, their victim- and beggar mentality being strengthened by the sentimental humanitarianism of naive white aid workers. Africans should look in the mirror, in order to realise their own part in this misery. Yet, writes Kabou, they refuse to do this. It is invariably the others who are to blame, foreign companies, the unjust global system of trade, the World Bank, the debt and poverty trap – not to mention the inherited burdens of colonialism. The black elites and the white helpers are united in their dogma that there exists a century-old plot by the white man against the black man, while they refuse to contemplate the more complex causes of this perpetual crisis. Many consider Kabou's claim, that ‘Africa-this-wonderful-continent-that-was-in-perfect-harmony-before-the-invasion-of-the-colonisers’ is an anti-colonialist myth and has nothing to do with reality, downright blasphemous. Certainly, her pamphlet is not without stereotyping, of ‘the Africans’ as such. She tends to neglect the external factors of this chronic crisis, such as the deprivation syndrome that white rule has left behind in the collective psyche. She also forgets that Africa lacks the springboard for the huge leap from agrarian society to industrial society. Modernisation was forced onto a continent that was unable to support it, socio-structurally and culturally, while the existing entrepreneurship and infrastructure were systematically undermined and destroyed by the colonial masters (Grill 2003, 115). There is no room for such historical subtleties in Kabou's general account. Nonetheless, no serious debate about the problems facing Africa can afford to ignore her fundamental thesis. She refers not only to the failed modernisation of postcolonial Africa but to modernisation that was refused, Africans being the only people on earth who still think that others must take care of their development. Kabou does not simply intend to condemn her African contemporaries. She wants to rouse them into shaking off their ‘unbearable mediocrity’. Indeed, the demand for self-criticism makes her argument compelling.

^10. Herzog is reported as commenting on his film,

What would you say if we arrived in Rome with bulldozers and pneumatic hammers and began to dig in St. Peter's? … We do not own the land, the land owns us. (‘Was würden Sie sagen, wenn wir mit Bulldozern und Presslufthämmern in Rom in die Peterskirche kämen und anfingen zu graben?… Wir besitzen nicht das Land, das Land besitzt uns.’ http://www.arthaus.de/wo_die_gruenen_ameisen_traeumen; my translation).