Speaking Truth to Power: Implications, trans/formations and knowledge production

Abstract (English)

The question of creating counter-hegemonic knowledge as an empowering pedagogical act has been largely studied throughout the last decades. In particular Feminist Abolition epistemologies (Angala Devis, 2016) and radical feminist pedagogy have shown the importance and the power of, what bell hooks (2014) calls, talking back to power when seeking for the truth and revealing that which is under the surface. The ‘oppositional gaze’ (hooks, 2010) at reality enables one to reframe the way in which one lives reality and then carries out actions of critical thinking as empowered agents within it.
This panel seeks to expose the way in which resistance to power, e.g. settler colonial violence, gives language, agency and opens up spaces recounted as a possible start to “see the truth”. In Academia, seeing the truth and speaking truth to power often lead to further action: involvement in activism (e.g., Dor, 2025; Konopny-Decleve, 2022), developing engaged epistemologies and research methods, revolutionizing teaching and education (e.g., Walsh, 2023) creating spaces of engagement with the public (e.g., Borofsky and De Lauri, 2019), and more.
While often recounted as empowering and revolutionary, radically trans/forming one’s gaze (Dor, 2018) , and looking at the socio-political reality with “new eyes” can be a painful process. This panel seeks to examine these processes and the reasons which led interlocutors and/or researchers to reframe their epistemic gaze.
This Panel invites papers on topic such as (but not limited to):
- Political action and radical feminist gaze(s)
- Truth, lies, anticolonial research and pedagogical activism
- Ethical problematics in conducting research and fieldwork in settler-colonial/post-colonial/neo-colonial regimes.
- The positionality of researchers and the impact of settler-colonial/post-colonial/neo-colonial regimes on research.
- Self-reflexivity as a feminist praxis of research in the context of state violence.
- Ontological, epistemological, and methodological concerns, critics, and modifications stemming from settler-colonial/post-colonial/neo-colonial settings.