Conference session

This session provides an overview of epistemic fragility as a phenomenon that is analogous and intersectional, but not synonymous, with white fragility. I briefly discuss the histories of exclusion within systems of knowledge production and culturally sanctioned habits of knowledge segregation by those with scientific authority - including how ‘scientific authority’ is a malleable, shifting set of characteristics. I then use my own field of higher education as one example of a professional culture that influences one’s identity and sense of capacity to take decolonial action. This culminates in an open speculation and probing into the possibilities of grief and fear as deep motivators for the defensive moves associated with epistemic fragility. This session will be of interest to those curious about the emotional aspects of fragility responses (fear and defensive anger), identity formation via habit (particularly in academic workplace cultures), and the historical patterns of knowledge legitimacy and hierarchy in Eurocentric Western modernity. The occurrence of epistemic fragility happens anywhere from research methodology debates to on-the-ground testimony of one’s understanding of the world. I believe that those in the fields of theology and religious studies, Mad studies, and queer studies will find common themes within my work, while all humanities and social sciences can benefit from learning about what it means to question our own ways of knowing when we come in contact with another’s.