Epistemological Justice

(Lilya Brik shouting "Books!" in a poster by artist Alexander Rodchenko, 1924.)

I tried to think of a chill thing to write about or a casual but interesting narrative that I think needs to be told, but I couldn't see those fitting the prompt. So, I'm just going to lean into the preachy-ness and answer the question in the most intuitive way I can.

It is a cliche that history is written by the winners, and that the marginalized, the brutalized, the erased have left no stories behind. But I think, ironically, this cliche further erases those peoples' stories by asserting that they left nothing behind. From folk songs, stories, myths, pictograms, rhymes, quilt patterns, recipes, old wives tales, superstitions, hobo signs, un-burned books, family lore, etc, the stories of those crushed by war, imperialism, slavery, and subjugation survive.

Those are the narratives that we need to hear. We need to hear the truth about glorified "heroes" of our society, who made sweeping speeches about freedom while they justified genocide in a far-flung part of the world. We need to hear the voices of generation upon generation of women, forced into silence, servitude, and seclusion. We need to hear the voices of LGBTQ+ people and their surviving lovers and families who would still be here today had our society, religions, and government not demonized and abandoned them to disease and poverty. We need to hear the voices of indigenous peoples, still fighting for survival and dignity. We need to hear the voices of black and brown people throughout our country and in every place that white supremacy has decimated populations, cultures, family bonds, futures, and pasts.  We need to hear the voices of the homeless, the poor, and the working class who have been ground into the dirt by a system that has always and will always value profits over human lives. We need to hear the story of millions of species on the brink of extinction; plants, animals, ecosystems, all part of our lifeblood (if only we knew.) We need to hear the stories of families whose homes are destroyed, whose olive trees are ripped from the earth, whose children die in rubble or at the end of a bayonet as they traverse walls and barriers that encroach ever farther. We need to hear the voices of those who have resisted throughout history, in the worst of conditions, with less hope than we have now of ever achieving justice and peace.

This system devours many things in its endless pursuit of power and profits. Not least of these are the stories of those who came before and those silenced now. This silencing is a form of epistemological violence. Suppressing these stories robs us of potential lessons, sources of strength, inspiration to resistance, and threads that connect us to each other and to generations that have gone before and those who will, gods willing, come after us.