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From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>
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Date: Mon, 24 Mar 1997 10:11:13 -0500
At 6:01 AM -0500 3/24/97, D. Diane Davis wrote:
>Epistemic or epistemological violence: dragging the discourse/language
>game/phrase universe of the Other across another one that it should not
>be held responsible for in order to clobber it. Example: when an
>Enlightenment spokesperson calls a post-structuralist a RELATIVIST in
>order to dismiss her, this is epistemic violence. Because the
>post-structuralist does not recognize the distinction between the
>'absolute' and the 'relative.' For her, there is nothing BUT the
>relative, and the question is about how to go about negotiating it
>ethically.
Doesn't this characterization do "epistemic violence" to the
"Enlightenment"? Don't all those post-structuralists create a myth of a
unitary Enlightenment discourse when in fact Western writers of the 18th,
19th, and early 20th century have spent a lot of time controversializing
over the nature of the subject, our understanding of the world, etc. etc.?
Doug