Kristie Dotson

• Doctor of Philosophy
• University of Michigan

Epistemic exclusion is a form of scholarly devaluation based on disciplinary and identity‐based biases within systems of evaluation. In two studies, we draw upon the theory of epistemic exclusion to explore potential biases shaping journal review and publication processes in Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy ( ASAP ). In Study 1, we coded...

Epistemic exclusion is a form of scholarly devaluation that studies suggest disproportionately and negatively affects faculty from marginalized groups (e.g., women, people of color). In the present study, we describe the development and initial validation of the Faculty Epistemic Exclusion Scale, a scale designed to measure experiences of epistemic...

Despite institutional efforts, growth in the number of faculty of color has largely plateaued, limiting research innovation and other benefits of diversity. In this article, we seek to understand structural barriers to faculty equity by (a) detailing a theory of epistemic exclusion within academia and (b) applying the theory of epistemic exclusion...

One of Octavia Butler’s common sites of exploration concerns the impact of parenting on her main characters. She appeared to locate reproduction and child-rearing as parts of human life with great potentials for transformed futures. From a perspective of intergenerational survival, that hope appears perfectly reasonable. In this letter to Butler, I...

Epistemologies have power. They have the power not only to transform worlds, but to create them. And the worlds that they create can be better or worse. For many people, the worlds they create are predictably and reliably deadly. Epistemologies can turn sacred land into ‘resources’ to be bought, sold, exploited, and exhausted. They can turn people...

Dear Kris, I know you will read this letter if it ever manages to get to you. You like reading. I’m not sure what you’ll think of it though. I just know I had to make this attempt to talk to you about the summer of 1984. There are some things you and I come to know in the summer of 1984 that will take us 35 years to learn to talk about. They were n...

Faculty of color experience a number of challenges within academia, including tokenism, marginalization, racial microaggressions, and a disconnect between their racial/ethnic culture and the culture within academia. The present study examined epistemic exclusion as another challenge in which formal institutional systems of evaluation combine with i...

Here I outline an often under‐appreciated position within Anglo‐analytic epistemology, that of the apostate to operative metaphilosophical constraints. To help identify and promote awareness of metaphilosophical apostacy, here, I describe the form of metaphilosophical apostacy that I practice in Anglo‐analytic epistemology (AAE). My apostasy with r...

In this paper, I explain Black feminist identity politics as a practice that is ‘on the way’ to settler decolonization in a US context for the fact that it makes demands that we attend to our “originating” stories and, in doing so, 1) generate potential for difficult coalitions for decolonization in settler colonial USA and 2) promoting a range of...

Because of their minority group status and underrepresentation, faculty of color (FOC) are tokens and as such, are highly visible within the academy. Paradoxically, token status may result in their being made to feel simultaneously invisible (e.g., accomplishments are unimportant, lack of belonging) and hypervisible (e.g., heightened scrutiny). Dra...

On December 3, 2014, in a piece entitled “White America’s Scary Delusion: Why Its Sense of Black Humanity Is So Skewed,” Brittney Cooper criticizes attempts to deem Black rage at state-sanctioned violence against Black people “unreasonable.” In this paper, I outline a problem with epistemology that Cooper highlights in order to explore whether beli...

Calls for diversity in higher education have been ongoing for, at least, a century. Today, the diversity movement in higher education is in danger of being co-opted in the US by a move to make ‘intellectual diversity,’ i.e. the diversity of political opinion, on par with the cultural and historical diversity that one finds within differently racial...

L’oppression épistémique désigne une exclusion épistémique persistante qui empêche ou limite la contribution d’une personne à la production des savoirs. On hésite à parler d’« oppression épistémique », et cela tient peut-être à la prémisse voulant que les formes épistémiques de l’oppression se ramènent en général à ses formes politiques et sociales...

This paper is an effort toward conceptual transparency around toxic inclusivity in academic feminism and the kinds of care it lacks toward, what amounts to, bad knowledge production practices. In this paper, we claim that some of the forms of reductive inclusion that ought to be avoided are epistemologically unsound practices that propagate disempo...

In this essay, I offer an epistemological accounting of Pauli Murray’s idea of Jane Crow dynamics. Jane Crow, in my estimation, refers to clashing supremacy systems that provide targets for subordination while removing grounds to demand recourse for said subordination. As a description of an oppressive state, it is an idea of subordination with an...

In the wake of continued structural asymmetries between women of color and white feminisms, this essay revisits intersectional tensions in Catharine MacKinnon’s Toward a Feminist Theory of the State while exploring productive spaces of coalition. To explore such spaces, we reframe Toward a Feminist Theory of the State in terms of its epistemologica...

This piece contextualizes a discussion by feminists on the identifiers ‘women of color’ and ‘Third World women’ that emerged from some uncomfortable and constructive conversations at the 2015 FEAST conference.

It is not uncommon to ask a race and gender-based question of a philosopher of race, only to hear ‘I do race, not gender’. To the ears of many Black feminists, this sounds, to be frank, utterly foolish. Here, I identify three metaphilosophical assumptions, i.e. the disaggregation, fundamentality and transcendental assumptions, that aid in underwrit...

In this paper, I begin to construct an inheritance map for the epistemological insights in Patricia Hill Collins’s book Black Feminist Thought. An inheritance map attempts to take stock of what one has been given in a particular project and what one inherits as work yet to do. Here I outline that Black Feminist Thought demonstrates that knowledge h...

In this paper, we analyze the recent public scandal involving Nafissatou Diallo and Dominique Strauss-Kahn to offer an account of the role affectability imbalances play in process-based invisibility. Process-based invisibilities, in this paper, refer to predictable narrative gaps within public narratives that can be aptly described as disappearance...

Epistemic oppression refers to persistent epistemic exclusion that hinders one’s contribution to knowledge production. The tendency to shy away from using the term “epistemic oppression” may follow from an assumption that epistemic forms of oppression are generally reducible to social and political forms of oppression. While I agree that many exclu...

It's not that we haven't always been here, since there was a here. It is that the letters of our names have been scrambled when they were not totally erased, and our fingertips upon the handles of history have been called the random brushings of birds. (Lorde 1990, ix) Because… [racialized peoples'] dehumanization has not been successful, conceivi...

In this paper, I question whether Leonard Harris' insurrectionist standard, in his article, “Insurrectionist Ethics,” is adequate for evaluating a fairly well documented form of U.S. Black women's insurrectionist resistance to oppression in slavery: infanticide. I show that though Harris' proposed standards could track insurrectionist acts that fol...

Environmental injustices often remain unknowable. An important argument for overcoming unknowability suggests that corporeal affectivity is integral for moral knowledge. However, when one begins to consider something like a global community and global environmental justice, corporeal affect becomes difficult to map. We will argue that one must begi...

In attempting to create a US Black feminist philosophy, I have uncovered three lessons in US Black women’s social theory. They are the following: 1) oppression is a multistable, social phenomenon; 2) many US Black women identify occupying a negative, socio-epistemic space as part of their experience of oppression; and 3) addressing oppression for m...

Environmental injustices often remain invisible. An important argument for overcoming oppression and social invisibilities suggests that corporeal affectivity is integral for moral knowledge. However, when one begins to consider something like a global community and global environmental justice, corporeal affect becomes difficult to map. We will ar...

In this paper, I offer a partial picture of my conceptual location as a US black feminist, professional philosopher and, by doing so, illustrate one of the ways Africana philosophy is being shaped and engaged. I offer a portrait of my conceptual location by identifying a value shared by some 'anti-theory' black feminists and some Africana professio...

I cannot recall the words of my first poem but I remember a promise I made my pen never to leave it lying in somebody else's blood. In this paper, first and foremost, I aim to issue a caution. Specifically, I caution that when addressing and identifying forms of epistemic oppression one needs to endeavor not to perpetuate epistemic oppression. Epis...

Too often, identifying practices of silencing is a seemingly impossible exercise. Here I claim that attempting to give a conceptual reading of the epistemic violence present when silencing occurs can help distinguish the different ways members of oppressed groups are silenced with respect to testimony. I offer an account of epistemic violence as th...

In this paper, I offer a partial picture of my conceptual location as a US black feminist, professional philosopher and, by doing so, illustrate one of the ways Africana philosophy is being shaped and engaged. I offer a portrait of my conceptual location by identifying a value shared by some ‘anti-theory’ black feminists and some Africana professio...