Epistemologies of Uncertainty in Research, Reading, and Writing

• In Event: Educational Reponses to Epistemological Issues

Abstract

This paper explores the mechanisms dominating research, reading, and writing, what Eve Sedgwick (2003) calls paranoid reading and what Kate McCoy (1997) calls a mastery project. Mastery projects disavow possibilities of the unknown and fall into our constant quest for certainty (Dewey, 1929). I argue towards the benefits of failing to know, of uncertainty. My question takes up Kate McCoy’s urge to work from a less heroic space and asks how can we read/think/write/theorize from a space of uncertainty? Embracing impossibilities of holding epistemological certainty may open us up to new directions and allows for a futurity, or ways of reading and writing that have yet to be imagined.

Author

• Ricky Gutierrez-Maldonado, University of Pennsylvania