Abstract

Inspired by the recent article “Who “knows better?” epistemic binaries, epistemocides and the risks of (selective) decolonisation in Central Asian narratives”, this roundtable is an opportunity to discuss and redefine positionality, epistemic authorities and their boundaries.

Claim knowledge or (epistemic) authorithy on a topic, or an issue, by virtue of one’s place of origin (or conversely claims that someone has not the authority to speak by force of their place of origin, ethnicity, class) have been worryingly increasing and Central Asian centered discussion have not remained immune to this, unscientific, approach. These positions span from “I know better because I am from here” to “you cannot say that because you are not from here” to “you are too embedded in the context to be objective”

None of these positions is healthy, or vaguely scientific. Collaborations are usually mutually enriching. However, such claims have felt sometimes uncomfortable as there is no widely acceptable standard or criteria to identify who might be “right”. Who has epistemic authority to talk about something? And in such case, epistemic authority by a certain category of scholars will automatically imply that other scholars, from other fields, countries, origins, are “wrong”?

It needs be acknowledged that epistemic authority is contextual, not necessarily country based (i.e. during the Karakalpak protests, would any scholar based in Tashkent be knowledgeable because they are from the same administrative unit - country?), authority is relative (obviously, someone who has spent some time in their childhood or just for research in Kazakhstan has experienced on their skin dynamics that someone who's never been there cannot imagine) but must also be filtered: someone who grew up in Dushanbe in the 90s will have many anecdotes and stories that can be useful to interpret the context, but to generalise them or use them for a scientific debate, they need to be critically reflected upon, poundered against positionality and contextualised.

At present, there's not really a technology, or a widely accepted definition, or no widely accepted boundary between the two categories, also because it's a grey zone rather than a line. It is all left to intuition, to perception, to ad hoc justifications. This roundtable addresses this question with a goal of coming up with some guiding principles that can be used to contribute to Central Asian debates or, conversely, agree that there is no standard and everything must be first contextualised.