Epistemologies of Resistance: Knowledge in the Peruvian Amazon

Authors

  • Lorena Reinert Messiah College

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15273/jue.v10i2.10352

Keywords:

indigenous epistemology, decolonial theory, hybridity, cultural change, Amazonian ethnography

Abstract

Epistemologies of resistance are knowledge frameworks that challenge oppressive structures and the ideologies that sustain them. In this paper, I analyze three weeks of ethnographic eldwork among the Asháninka of the Peruvian Amazon to demonstrate the ways in which the epistemologies that I encountered challenge oppressive structures and their underlying ideologies. My ndings consider the use of social and environmental context as epistemic indicators. I contrast these context-dependent epistemologies with the context-independent epistemologies that dominate contemporary “Western” thought, where the goal is to separate knowledge from context. I then consider how, as hybrid epistemologies that have emerged out of interaction and exchange in a globalized world, indigenous knowledge frameworks resist the notion of a binary di erence between indigenous and “Western” itself. These epistemologies of resistance critique the double binds created and sustained through the colonial model.

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Published

2020-10-19

Issue

Vol. 10 No. 2 (2020)

Section

Articles

License

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