(Scientific) Knowledge and (Non-)Violence

Critical peace research aims at questioning existing orders of oppression, exploitation and annihilation and at interrelating marginalized theoretical traditions of resistant and liberating knowledge. The interdisciplinary theorization of epistemic violence focuses on the preconditions and consequences of our knowledge in the context of European colonialism and the capitalist world system. The concept of epistemic violence brings into focus the constitutive connection between knowledge, domination and violence in our colonial modernity. In doing so, the privilege of Euro- and androcentric knowledge production is challenged, even beyond an analysis and critique of obvious relations of violence. Fundamental research on the connection between political and epistemic violence can thus contribute to a variety of disciplines and fields of debate.