Exploring epistemologies of ignorance through the lens of black women's food-related discussions.

Food-related discussions have grown exponentially within and outside of academia in the last few decades. These discussions, like other knowledge claims, tend to reflect the perspectives and interests of systemically privileged communities. This interdisciplinary project ‘starts off thought’ from the perspective of the subjugated, and specifically from the food-related perspectives of black women. Relatively unstructured, food-infused, feminist-informed methods were deployed to bring the relatively marginalized perspectives in (feminist) food studies to the forefront. Whilst the project’s initial intention was to challenge ignorance by learning about food from black women’s perspectives, the discussions with 12 other black women in Sheffield (UK) evolved the project into using food-related discussions as a vehicle for exploring epistemologies of ignorance. Overall the thesis argues that, whilst academic and other knowledges produced by black women continue to be vulnerable to the systemic and systematic forms of erasure that maintain epistemologies of ignorance and the epistemic injustices that follow, alternative spaces of knowledge production are also providing black women some opportunities to redress hermeneutical injustices. The empirical findings demonstrate the vulnerability of black women’s knowledges to systemic erasure in ways that actively produce various epistemologies of ignorance, through insufficient consideration of the situatedness of knowers; and through various experiences of epistemic injustice including testimonial injustice and testimonial smothering. These discussions also speak to the often-ignored racialized nature of food politics. Finally, the findings also point to the resourcefulness of hermeneutically marginalized communities, who are reclaiming kitchens as alternative spaces for the production of knowledges that redress hermeneutical injustice.

Key words:
Epistemologies of ignorance| Black feminisms| Feminist food studies| Epistemic injustice