Performing Identity between Qualified and Disqualified Epistemologies

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    • Presentation speakers
      • Joshua P. L. Entsminger, University of Edinburgh, UK

    Abstract:

    This paper attempts to offer an analysis of the way in which the metaphor of consumption might elucidate the carrot and stick games which are played among persons, epistemologies, and epistemic communities in the attempt to not only be dominant but find themselves, in the vein of the work of Christian Matheis, reproduced in that community. In particualr this paper hopes to extend the analysis of modern epistemologies by the methods of qualifying and disqualifying epistemic practices and habits with epistemic reference; whereupon, the domain of normative acts become far more extensive when realized in contrast with what those epistemic acts and practices, whether acknowleged or not, exclude, provincialze, and fetishize. The position of this paper is that epistemologies are generated not simply in but among communities; thus they develope tacit habits of establishing identity, of justifying ones cognitive labors in the face of someones epistemic alterity, or more so, that such habits are underdeveloped in their abity to attend to alterity qua otherness and not alterity qua “classification.” Such is the face-value of what Enrique Dussel calls “ego conquiro” (i conquer) which is at the heart and often preceeds and develops ego cogitio. This paper takes the position that the identity-defense of epistemolgies is a labor of modern epistemologies often often focused on meta, and taxonomizing concerns. We do not simply speak to each other, but seek to classify each other. These identity habits can be easily assessed under consumption and the paper hopes to explore a “natural link” between such habits of consumption via identity and the epistemic practices by which we qualify and classify one another unto the production of the modern ethos conditioning of such practices.