Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn: Bonding In/difference Across Academic Activisms

Session Submission Type: Symposium

Abstract

This session explores epistemological translations and conflicts that often arise when working across sites of knowledge production that problematise and challenge institutionalised oppression related to cultural and sexual difference. The papers address the complexities of the political economy of academic knowledge production when undertaking postcolonial, indigenous and queer research. This symposium maps ethical dilemmas related to researcher positionalities and protocols of communication that may enable or hinder ‘agonistic’ (Mouffe 2005) ‘solidarities’ (Souza Santos 2007) within and across academic activisms. We gesture towards a future of epistemological pluralism (author, 2009; author, Akinawe & Cooper 2011), where different knowledge systems can be held in productive tension, as opposed to being fused or framed in dialectical opposition to each other.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Queer Studies

Cosponsor

• SIG-Postcolonial Studies and Education

Chair

• Lilia Chavez, University of San Francisco

Papers

• Border Crossing in Knowledge Production: Epistemological Pluralism, Ethical Globalism, and Agonistic Solidarities - Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti, University of Oulu

• Beyond Relationships Defined by the Cartesian Subject: Narratives and Metaphysics in Indigenous Knowledge Systems - Cash Ahenakew, The University of British Columbia

• Engaging with Race and Sexualities: Sexuality Education Research with Young People in Australia and New Zealand - Kathleen Anne Quinlivan, University of Canterbury; Mary Louise Rasmussen, Monash University; Clive Aspin, The University of Sydney

Discussant

• Steven Paul Camicia, Utah State University