Contested Truths: Re-Shaping and Positioning Politics of Knowledge
16.06.11-18.06.11
Berlin, Germany
Aims of the conference
The central topic of the conference is the politics of knowledge and its entanglement with issues of epistemics, power and gender. Focusing on a deeper understanding of the knowledge-power nexus, the conference particularly aims to analyze social and epistemological orders, configurations and hierarchies of knowledge.
Thereby, a wide range of issues dealing with different sites of knowledge production, objects of inquiry and fields of research will be addressed. The conference seeks to contribute to debates concerning the situatedness of knowledge. This topic was first adressed in the humanities, science and technology studies and gender studies by Foucault, Bourdieu, Latour, Haraway, Harding and Barad among others.
The conference particularly engages with the following questions from this vast and heterogeneous field: How is knowledge socially and epistemically formed and positioned? What are the consequences of certain practices and techniques of knowledge formation? Where and how does knowledge legitimate power relations? How can hegemonic politics of knowledge be destabilized and re-shaped? Finally, what are the 'conditions of possibility' for truths to be contested? The three panels address these central questions by (1) uncovering implicit knowledge politics in the formation of disciplines and the process of canonization, (2) discussing the impact of classifications and infrastructures and (3) questioning and destabilizing universal and neutral knowledge.
1. Forming disciplines and canonization This panel focuses on the political implications of the formation of disciplines and the process of canonization. Contributions might analyze, for instance, how disciplines are defined by the gendering of their methods and theoretical foundations as demonstrated in computer science and historiography. Other topics include the function of efforts for integration (such as the aim to position psychology as a life science) or boundary work (such as distinguishing gender studies from the knowledge of feminist activists). Papers could identify and question legitimating strategies or analyze 'regimes of translation' (Latour).
One example of this type of analysis is the study of the migration of the term 'system' from engineering to sociology. We are also looking for presentations that point out the mutual dependency between certified and accepted knowledge and excluded and rejected 'non-knowledge'.
2. Classification and infrastructure
Classification systems arrange knowledge in a proper order (e.g., the biological systematics of Linné), help to find knowledge (e.g., library
classifications) or aim to support communication by providing controlled vocabularies (e.g., in knowledge management). However, classifications are at the same time instruments of power. We seek contributions, which investigate social and epistemological exclusions that are intertwined with particular classifications and infrastructures. Participants might present case studies that explore how classifications are (co-)produced by those who are classified (such as in virtual social networks). Presentations about strategies to avoid knowledge classification systems and those, which call existing classifications or infrastructures into question, are welcome. In addition, we also encourage submissions on the subversive potential of infrastructures (as in queer projects).
3. Localizing and positioning knowledge By viewing knowledge as situated and located, the panel raises questions about the position of authorship, conflicts between legitimation and marginalization, as well as differences between global and local knowledge distribution.
Contributors could address some of these problems within different theoretical frameworks, e.g., by developing critical perspectives or drawing on established concepts such as -situated knowledge' (Haraway) from fields such as gender or science studies. They might also examine particular politics of location, demarcation or transgression of boundaries that are, e.g., inspired by notions such as -travelling concepts' (Bal) or -quasi-objects' (Latour) or 'travelling theories'
(Said) following postcolonial theories. We are also interested in proposals for anti-hegemonic positioning of knowledge or the possibilities of decolonization in the production of knowledge.
Important information
We invite abstracts for twenty-minute papers.
Abstracts should be in English and may not exceed 300 words. They should be accompanied by a short biographical sketch of not more than
300 words and sent to contestedtruths@gmail.com until 1 December 2010.
Please indicate the panel your paper relates to.
The conference language will be English. Please indicate your accessibility needs as well as any other possible requirements (e.g.,
childcare) by
1 December 2010, we will do our best to meet them or get back to you to figure out what we can do. Please note that travel funds can only be granted in exceptional cases. We ask participants to apply in time for travel funding at their home institutions.
Organizing committee
-- PhD research programm "Gender as a category of knowledge" (working group "knowledge": Dr.
des. Corinna Bath, Jens Borcherding M.A., Lukas Engelmann M.A., Dipl.-Psych. Lisa Malich, Falko Schnicke M.A.)
-- Charité Berlin (Prof. Dr. Volker Hess) and the
-- Technical University of Braunschweig (Prof. Dr. Bettina Wahrig)
Email: contestedtruths@gmail.com
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