Epistemic injustice and unwellness in the classroom: Creating knowledge like we matter

Abstract

In this essay, I reflect on my experience teaching graduate classes on social justice in Yerevan. Here, an important part of the experience of injustice is epistemic. By this, I mean that students’ discourses of injustice often centre around their perception of other peoples’ lack of and/or refusal of their knowledge and consequent misrepresentation of current – and past – events. This form of epistemic injustice is layered upon experiences of war, loss, and dislocation which drive many students to take up graduate studies in social justice. In response, I consider the nature of the unwellness created by the intertwining of this experience and the epistemic injustice perpetuated around and about it. I discuss troubles in the reception and misuse of context. Subsequently, I think about how we can challenge this unwellness through how we create knowledge as a learning community. Rather than producing rules, I propose touchstones which might guide us to create knowledge as though our ‘ we’ – in community of difference – matters, and as though we, in fact, matter.