Repairing epistemic harms through student wellbeing at South African universities
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Widely reported movements such as the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall campaigns in post-apartheid South Africa reflect a deeply disenfranchised and disillusioned generation of students. The daily harms that some students suffer because of who they are perceived to be are often scooped into imposed collective identities. Such collective identities so embed themselves into societal imaginaries that there is little thought or curiosity about how oppression or dehumanisation is experienced in university settings. As a result, universities persist in talking about ‘black student experiences’ as if these are homogenous. Such conceptual aggrandisement simultaneously collectivises and reduces an interest in the actual harms that these students experience, which results in an unawareness and unpreparedness to repair. The focus of this presentation, therefore, is threefold: firstly, to consider epistemic harms, and how and when they unfold; secondly, to explore what epistemic reparations are, and to whom they apply; and thirdly, to examine how epistemic reparations can become a powerful educational tool to gain a deeper understanding of how harms affect human relationships. However, it might be as important for universities to focus on the cultivation of epistemic wellbeing as a framing ethos.
Recommended reading:
- Davids, N. (2019) The consequences of increasing student alienation in higher education institutions. BrieflySpeaking, No. 9. Council on Higher Education (CHE). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339975135_
- Kumalo, S.H. (2018) Explicating abjection – historically white universities creating natives of nowhere? Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning, 6(1):1-17. https://epubs.ac.za/index.php/cristal/article/view/1929/1444
- Lackey, J. (2022). Epistemic reparations and the right to be known. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 96:54-89. https://philarchive.org/rec/LACQRA