The Vanishing Self: Consciousness-Raising as an Epistemic Transformation
Standpoint epistemology is best understood as a family of theses that when, taken together, comprise the following claim: that a standpoint represents an achievement that makes accessible situated knowledge that is epistemically privileged with respect to knowledge generated from dominantly-situated standpoints. Little has been said about one of the core theses that comprise this claim – the achievement thesis – or the process by which a standpoint is achieved. This paper is meant to address this gap. Drawing on the literature on transformative experiences, I argue that consciousness-raising – the process required for the achievement of a standpoint – represents an epistemic transformation. Consciousness-raising epistemically transforms who we are by changing our ways of attending to and interpreting the world, making us sensitive to information (and receptive to social explanations) that we were not before. Thus, I suggest that we can change what we know by changing who we are epistemically.

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Meeting ID: 972 2757 2118