Bearing Witness [Alison Wylie]

Date: Feb 16th 2021

Speaker: Alison Wylie (University of British Columbia)

Chair: Abigail Nieves Delgado

My aim in this seminar is to sharpen the focus of questions about what role we philosophers of science can usefully play in decolonizing the epistemic underpinnings of our own practice as well as that of the sciences we study. Recent strategies for decolonizing archaeological practice in settler/colonial contexts are a rich source of advice and of cautionary tales in this connection. I draw on these – specifically, an account of inquiry as a practice of “bearing witness” – to make concrete the promise and the challenges of building collaborative partnerships that can reorient what we do and how we do it.