Epistemic Disobedience and Grief in Academia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This study is an important addition to the body of work on diffractive methodology and academia and will appeal to a wide audience. It is a well defined and original study in terms of methodology and questions asked with the author exploring important issues as they pertain to ethnic minorities in Western academia with particular reference to Norway and the experience of coloured women there. It pivots ample support from recent research to support the points being made with links to a diverse and rich selection of past work but needs to use this to move beyond recreating dichotomies.

The piece is coherent and cohesive and provides thought-provoking analyses of the data obtained.  However, often the author rather than understand how her interviewees are not only challenging dichotomies by what they say and do but changing accepted norms, ways of viewing the world so that diversity in all its manifestations is valued and accepted, sees only the dichotomy performed. For example Margaret’s request that her daughter play guitar rather than perform as a ballerina unsettles the teacher’s perceptions not only about what a student should be allowed/asked to do but also the perception that ethnic minority women from ‘conservative backgrounds’ can not only actively engage with the status quo but through so doing change it to become something richer and other. Margaret understands how to escape her ‘entrapment’ by surprising her colleagues with ‘strong opinions’ and in this way looks to unsettle the established ‘zero-point epistemology’ the author writes about. Similarly Victoria by her stance, her way of being and doing, is unsettling the ‘Bildung’ of her establishment and is seen as someone ‘unique and special.’ She has found that to perturb the dichotomies of academia ‘you must know something that no one else masters. People can say what they want, but if they ought to go through you and your knowledge to get ahead, this gives you a position in academia. Only then you will be acknowledged.’ It is these women’s strength, despite the grief, their ability to disrupt their circumstances using their gender and colour, that is moving the world of academia, albeit slowly, to accept others as academics not as in a dichotomous positioning but as one of a multiplicity.

Some other points to consider: 1. Strengthening the opening paragraph of the Introduction would provide a clearer roadmap for the reader to follow (I have attached a sample of what might be possible). 2. I was confused as to whether the 3 interviewees were combinations of the 6 women interviewed or 3 of the total of 6. This needs to be made clear at the start. 3.  The piece as a whole would benefit from closer proofreading.

Overall this is an exceptionally valuable addition to the body of knowledge on the epistemic injustices suffered by gendered and racialized ethnic bodies in academia but needs to avoid creating new dichotomies in the process.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

I really appreciate your feedbacks and comments. 

See attached document.  

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

General comments:

The author has developed an interesting and engaging reflective piece of research on how the gendered and 'coloured' subjectivites of non-Norwegian academics tend to be elided by the zero point epistemic hubris of colonial practices of Norwegian academia. The modes of argumentation and style adopted are fairly typical of post-structural discourses, and consequently, require some effort from the reader to follow and to understand. This is by no means a criticism, although it does put an onus on the author to ensure that terminology is used consistently, and that, when new concepts are introduced, the author does not herself fall into a trap of intellectual elitism by assuming that her readership understands the terms used.

In reading this manuscript, I found myself increasingly sympathetic to the author's perspective, and would therefore endorse that this piece be published as the author advances perspectives that require an audience and which will, I hope, stimulate critically reflective discussion and increasingly reflexive practices among the academic communities.

There are a few points I'd like to raise for the author to consider prior to recommending that this piece be published in its present form however. 

(1) I was struck by how two of the women interviewed, who were apparently not Western, are given very Western (and white) sounding names: Margaret and Victoria. The provenance of these names remains unknown, but these seem quite incongruous given the focus of the paper. Perhaps I am over thinking it.

(2) While the author is quite right to call out the western hubris of zero point epistemology, aside from a reference to an exchange with a kindergarten teacher by one of the respondents, the voices of other female academics is curiously absent from this discussion. I am left wondering whether white Norwegian native women would find themselves agreeing with the author's analysis? Do they too find themselves to be simultaneously both invisible and highly visible by the male patriarchal gaze? How do they deal with this position of being gendered as 'other'? 

(3) The author notes that six women were interviewed, but the paper details only three of these. What happened to the others? Why were their stories not included? What decisions led to them remaining - from the reader's perspective at least - invisible?

(4) As an aside, the author may also be interested in some of the literature on embodied and enactive cognition (Varela, Di Paulo, de Haegher, Cuffari, Colombetti, et al.), in which affects, as drivers of bringing forth the world simultaneous to acting in the world, are at the forefront. I mention this in passing, as the author's list of references are, mostly, strangely devoid of accounts of the centrality of the body in locating a phenomenology of lived experience and sense-making, despite references to Haraway, and the use of diffractive methods of analysis.

Clarifications required:

Lines 106/ 107: "However, academic meritocracy still enacts as an agent, stretching out, both invisible, and 106 omnipresent in academia today" - meaning unclear

Line 109/ 110: "Zero-point epistemology, as a normative and unmarked form of knowledge, departs from Western supremacy and colonial agency". Wasn't Castro-Gómez's point of ZP hubris the fallacy of unobserved observers, which is a continuance of Western supremacy and colonial agency not a departure from?

Line 112/ 113: "Zero-point epistemology represent the right side of binaries such as culture/nature, mind/body, rationality/affect, objectivity/subjectivity and universal/locally" - ZPE/ hubris would represent the left, not the right of these binaries. Indeed, this is part of the premise given in the abstract, and that it would be decolonialised academic discourses that bring forth (and integrate) the right hand side of these as alternate modes of knowledge production.

Lines 138 to 141: the author writes of conducting first, two conversations and second, four conversations. This may be a stylistic issue, but it would appear that the author is saying that she conducted conversations initially with two, and secondly with four female academics. Unless, the author means that the first set of conversations were actually two separate conversations involving two female academics, and the second four separate conversations with four female academics. The author is asked to clarify her methods.

Lines 173 and 174: "Affects are the engines of assemblages," It might be helpful if the author could locate her understanding of the term 'assemblages'. Is she drawing on Deleuze & Guattari's or DeLanda's conception, for example? Since DeLanda elaborated on D&G's work, both conceptions refer to intensities, coding, stratification, etc. However, the author has seemingly translated and equated intensities with affect, while sidestepping coding and stratifications and the other dynamic processes which compose assemblages. Hence, if the author is drawing on another theory of assemblage(s), it would be helpful if she could clarify this, or discuss her understanding in relation to D&G and/ or DeLanda's.

Minor typos, etc.:

Line 22: "education have been crucial" = "education has been crucial"

Line 27: "generic 21st century skills" = "generic 21st Century skills"

Line 31: "serves as key premises" = "serve as key premises"

Line 74: "Studies stresses how" = "Studies stress how"

Line 97: "narrating itself objectively and neutral" = "narrating itself objectively and neutrally" or "narrating itself as objective and neutral"

Line 108: "have agency of its" = "has agency of its"

Line 108: "changes, transforms, and take new" = "changes, transforms, and takes new"

Line 113: "Bodies that challenges and interrupts" - "Bodies that challenge and interrupt"

Line 114: "bodies put of place" - 'put' or 'out or 'put into'? Please clarify.

Line 128: "Academia cannot longer" = "Academia can no longer"

Line 148: "process took long time" = "process took a long time"

Line 169 to 170: "realized that these women academic life" = "realized that these women's academic life"

Lines 172 and 173: "Thought experiences and recalling of both my and women’s affects, as well as bodily sensations prompted by conversations, the diffractive turn started." - please restructure for readability

Line 176: "body have agency" = "bodies have agency" or "a body has agency"

Lines 176 and 177: "Haraway’s concept situated knowledge" = "Haraway’s concept of situated knowledge"

Line 183: "our colored body generate in different academic settings" = "our colored bodies generate in different academic settings" or "our colored body generates in different academic settings"

Line 294: "Victoria enact as" = "Victoria enacts as"

Line 469: "Is of vital importance" = "It is of vital importance"

 

I hope the foregoing comments are useful to the author, offered in the spirit of improving and tightening her argument to get it print-ready.

Author Response

I really appreciate your comments and feedbacks to the manuscript. 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf