Month: May 2024

The resources shared for this blog offer different perspectives on the social, cultural and political perceptions of religion in contemporary society: namely highlighting the way religion is positioned as antithetical to rational, liberal, Western thought. As with the first blog, I found the theoretical reading around epistemic justice a really useful framework for unpicking the shorter resources included as part of this task, allowing me to situate religious discrimination in a wider, structural context. For example, the last video discusses religious identity being seen as ‘other’ and the interviewee speaks of trying to find common ground with people who may find his identity threatening by referring to or emphasising other aspects of his identity. I could not but see this in the context of epistemic injustice where “a subject suppresses their own testimony out of only an anticipatory fear owing to their not knowing whether their interlocutor will understand their religious beliefs and practices” (Rekis, 2023, p.785-786).

In her essay, Jaclyn Rekis outlines the way epistemic injustice operates with regards to religious practices, mapping out its implications by considering religious identity from the point of view of social identity and as a worldview (2023). Rekis refers to Fricker’s definition of epistemic injustice as instances where “individuals can be harmed in their capacity as knowers when their testimony is wrongly diminished according to inequalities in social power” (Rekis, 2023, p.780). The way epistemic justice operates in relation to religious identity is mainly through a denial of religious testimony as a valid form of knowledge and experience of the world. According to Rekis, this is particularly salient in secular environments such as academia where ‘rational’, naturalistic worldview dominates, implicitly discrediting other forms of knowledge or other types of knowing.

This text made me reflect carefully on my teaching practice in Contextual and Theoretical Studies. We often encourage students to draw on their own experiences in their research, especially when it comes to third year dissertation modules (CTS3). However, we still ask students to follow ‘appropriate academic standards’ in their research, drawing from ‘credible’ sources and supporting their writing with ‘evidence’. Reading the essay cited above has made me realise how such language is deeply rooted in a Western secular tradition that may present barriers or exclude forms of knowing, such as religious knowledge, that Rekis outlines, as well as tacit or embodied knowledge.

This resource has made me question how and what we teach, what expectations we set for students and consider how we may implicitly discriminate against students whose religious identity shapes their positionality, their worldview, their interests and their creative work. Equally, as Kwame Anthony Appiah discusses in his talk, it has also made me reflect on how these different forms of knowledge production – one more ‘secular’, based on written forms, and the other more ‘religious’, based on oral traditions, for example – can coexist and how we can support students to engage with different modes of research or approaches to knowledge. In the first instance, it has highlighted the importance of reviewing the language of our unit guides, assignment briefs and learning outcomes to consider whether there may be different ways of thinking about ‘Knowledge’ and ‘Enquiry’ as two main criteria through which we assess CTS units.

I started the work on this blog by reading Kimberle Crenshaw’s 1991 article “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color”. While I have been discussing intersectionality in my teaching, I hadn’t engaged with Crenshaw’s work in depth. Particularly eye-opening in her writing, was the clarity with which she conveys the implications of different structures of domination. She powerfully shows that intersectionality is not just an abstract theoretical concept, but that it has real, tangible consequences in everyday life. As she writes: “The struggle over which differences matter and which do not is neither an abstract nor an insignificant debate among women. […] In the context of violence, it is sometimes a deadly serious matter of who will survive – and who will not.” (Crenshaw, 1991, p.1265)

While reviewing these resources, I could see Crenshaw’s thinking echoed through each video: through calls to truly address structural inequalities around race and disability in the first video; through discussions of visible/invisible identities in the second video; and in the last video by emphasising the fact that the needs of disabled people should not be an afterthought. Each of these videos also highlighted, though not explicitly, how supposedly inclusive spaces – queer spaces, Paralympics, arts organisations – are often not inclusive for people with disabilities, or people of colour, or women, further reinforcing the need for an intersectional approach to addressing inclusivity.

The resource that stuck with me the most was the second video, documenting the work of the artist Christine Sun Kim. By exploring different aspects of communication through her experience as a deaf person, Sun Kim raises wider issues about the visibility and invisibility of disabled people in society, linking that to other aspects of her identity as a woman, as a mother, as an artist. These aspects are subtly woven in her storytelling,  for example, when she speaks about living in Berlin where childcare is free and where she has a degree of financial security or is able to access suitable studio space, she is highlighting the way structural, social factors enable her to work and live as an artist.

In my own teaching, I have mostly encountered what may be called non-visible disabilities (though I recognise this term is contested). The most direct way in which that disability is made ‘visible’ through the university’s systems and structures, is with ISA documents. While ISAs stipulate how we should approach our teaching and assessment, I have too often found that these are treated as almost as a ‘bonus’ and teaching is not structured to be inclusive as a baseline approach. This is evident with teaching materials which are often not inclusive, are shared late, and are often not accessible in format. The second issue in terms of ISAs that relates to intersectionality is the fact that despite very large numbers of international students in our cohorts, most students with ISAs seem to be home or EU students. This may indicate that there is a barrier in terms of accessing the support system, in particular for our Mandarin-speaking students that I think would be worth exploring in more detail in dialogue with the disability service. It’s important that we consider questions such as: What understanding do our students have of disability service and support it offers? How might we address the potential stigma attached to disability? How can language development and disability service work in dialogue to support international students? What other barriers and challenges might those students be facing (issues of class, race, gender-based discrimination)?