Exploring Epistemic Violence

While the notion of epistemic violence is well-known in post- and decolonial studies, it is still relatively absent in IR, in Peace and Conflict Studies, in Political Philosophy and in other fields of knowledge that deal with issues of political violence. This workshop will discuss the supposedly simply question of what epistemic violence actually is. How can we frame it as a concept, and how can we approach phenomena that we would describe with that notion? How can we discern a post- and decolonial concept of epistemic violence from or link it with other wide understandings of violence, such as structural, symbolic, discursive, visual violence etc. that stem from a Eurocentrist tradition of thought? From a post- and decolonial point of view, should we give up common and narrow concepts of violence altogether or can we find plausible ways to link them with a thicker concept of epistemic violence? In which ways would it change our analyses of direct and physical political violence, if we developed a theory of epistemic violence?