Aesthetic Resistance: Reimagining Critical Epistemology and the Grammars of Silence

2024/10/13 by José Medina
Social Sciences · #Critical Race Theory in Education #Feminist Epistemology and Gender Studies #Posthumanist Ethics and Activism

paper · doi:10.1080/02691728.2024.2402435

openalex publication_date 2024/10/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

This article argues that critical epistemology should aim at centering the voices and perspectives of those who have been excluded and silenced, proposing a way of doing that by combining Black feminist standpoint theory and Latina feminist theory as they converge in María del Rosario Acosta López’s philosophy of radical listening. The article also argues for the crucial significance of aesthetic interventions for creating epistemic friction that can transform our sensibilities so that we can start to listen to silences. The author offers an analysis of the subversive potential in Doris Salcedo’s public art as an illustration of how aesthetic resistance can be used in practices of epistemic activism that resist insensitivity and promote new ways of listening to silenced voices and liminal sites.

Citations

• The Speculum of Ignorance: The Women's Health Movement and Epistemologies of Ignorance
• The Epistemology of Protest

Related

• Silence as Medium
• A Question of Silence: Feminist Theory and Women's Voices
• The Aesthetics of Creative Activism: Introduction
• The Epistemology of Protest
• “My sister went to Steubenville, OH and all I got was this lousy shirt”: Composing Feminist Activism with The Clothesline Project