Experience-based knowledge from “the periphery of the periphery”

• In Event: 50867 - Liberating, decolonizing, and queering science, knowledge, and technology

Abstract

Full title: Experience-based knowledge from “the periphery of the periphery”: knowledge production dynamics among Brazilian academics/technical experts and mothers of police victims. This paper examines how Brazilian mothers of police violence victims transform from research subjects into knowledge producers, challenging traditional academic hierarchies through what we term "experience-based knowledge from the periphery of the periphery." Drawing on documentary analysis, interviews, and ethnographic observation, we analyze the epistemic dynamics between these mothers' movements and academic/technical experts. We discuss how these predominantly Black women from marginalized backgrounds develop sophisticated critical consciousness through direct encounters with state violence and institutional injustice, producing knowledge that transcends testimony to provide theoretical insights on police violence in post-dictatorship Brazil. Their demand to be recognized as researchers rather than research subjects represents a fundamental challenge to epistemic hierarchies reproduced within Brazilian academia itself. By bridging Science and Technology Studies frameworks with Paulo Freire's pedagogy of the oppressed, we demonstrate how these mothers' insistence that "we didn't want to be a laboratory anymore" reveals both epistemological injustice and possible pathways toward more democratic knowledge production practices. Their collaborative methodologies, where "mother researches mother," not only enhance understanding of state violence but also offer broader implications for decolonizing knowledge production by recognizing the unique contributions of those experiencing the phenomenon being studied.

Authors

• Veridiana Domingos Cordeiro, University of Sao Paulo

• Pedro Moisés, University of Wisconsin-Madison