The Quest for Self-reflective Knowledge and Practice: Is an Epistemological Blindness Relative to Time and Situation?

Author : Taye Birhanu Taressa

Abstract : This essay is an expository and critical reflection on the fifth chapter of Boaventura De Sousa Santos’s Book (2014) entitled “Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide”. The title of the fifth chapter is “Toward an Epistemology of Blindness: Why the New Forms of “Ceremonial Adequacy” neither Regulate nor Emancipate” (pages 136-163). I gave this essay the title, The Quest for Self-reflective Knowledge and Practice: Is an Epistemological Blindness Relative to Time and Situation? The paper calls for the need to generate a self-reflective knowledge and practice or a kind of epistemological paradigm that has a room for the consciousness of its own blindness/incompleteness to make the world better. I shall also establish the assertion, that there is relativity of epistemological blindness, in relation to the period and socio-economic and political situations that the society exhibited the blindness passed through. In contrary to Santos’s claim, in this essay, I shall present the view that “knowledge as regulation” and “knowledge as emancipation” are interdependent and reinforce one another; rather than being mutually exclusive, even within the marginalized culture itself.

Keywords : Epistemological, Blindness, Knowledge, Practice, Self-reflective.

Conference Name : International Conference on Philosophy Education and Applied Philosophy (ICPEAP-24)

Conference Place : Paris, France

Conference Date : 15th Nov 2024