Alisse Waterston: "Knowledge is Power—or is it? Reflections on the Value of Public Scholarship"

ABSTRACT:

In the context of ever growing threats to life, to rights and to academic freedom, the trend towards finding safety in self-censorship, and the dangerous implications of all forms of silencing, in this presentation I reflect on expectations underlying efforts to bring scholarly knowledge into the public conversation on critical issues. Referencing my own work and that of other anthropologists, I question the value and efficacy of public scholarship amid ubiquitous structural, political, economic, and military violence. Identifying assumptions underlying my work over decades and the sense of urgency that has driven much of it, I wonder: are efforts to communicate knowledge as if the world depended upon it worthwhile endeavors or is that Enlightenment ideal a fantasy? I bring to the seminar a series of questions for our collective, interdisciplinary consideration and discussion: What does our scholarly research and writing do for the world? Does that question even matter? If not, what are we doing and why are we doing it? If it matters, in what ways is that so, and how do we know?