Gastwissenschaftlicher von Januar bis Februar 2024
About the Person
Blas Radi is a researcher at the Argentinian Society of Philosophical Analysis. His areas of research are Non-Ideal Theory, Social Epistemology, Epistemic Injustice, Epistemology of Ignorance and Trans Studies. He has a BA in Philosophy from the University of Buenos Aires and is a PhD candidate with a full scholarship granted by the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina (CONICET).
He is Faculty at the Department of Philosophy, University of Buenos Aires, where he teaches Social Epistemology. As a public philosopher, Blas is an advocate for trans justice. He has written and lectured in English and Spanish on pressing issues such as: epistemic extortion, reproductive injustice and eugenics, and the concept of travesticide/transfemicide. In 2018, he created the Independent Chair of Trans Studies at the School of Philosophy and Literature (UBA).
Projekt am fiph
"Towards an ignorance-first political epistemology"
In recent years, political debates concerning conditions of oppression have increasingly brought to the forefront the cognitive dysfunctions inherent to our epistemic economy. These dysfunctions not only undermine possibilities for participation and consensus-building but also ensure the maintenance of the status quo. In this context, ignorance has garnered significant attention and has begun to play a notable role in shaping the demands of social movements. To begin with, concepts such as "epistemology of ignorance" and "white ignorance," coined by Charles Mills (1997), have proven not only philosophically insightful in analyzing race and racism, but have also demonstrated their political potency, extending beyond academic philosophy. After all, these epistemic concepts are intertwined with disputes over the transformation of the social order. As a result, Mills' conceptual toolkit has become a fundamental component in debates that engage the public and social movements. This has prompted essential debates on the nature of ignorance, its structural character, how it is produced, and the conditions under which it excuses wrongful actions, if at all.
My project aims to contribute to these debates from a philosophical standpoint, exploring some of the most pressing questions they pose, along with possible answers and implications. In this fellowship, I am interested in looking into certain characteristics of ignorance understood as a substantive topic and examining its potential to shed light on issues in political epistemology. To do this, I will focus specifically on the existing narratives about epistemic injustice and the epistemology of disagreement.