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The Politics of Knowledge Edited by Samuli Hurri and Iiris Kestilä ______ The Politics of Knowledge Edited by Samuli Hurri and Iiris Kestilä __________________________________________________________________ No Foundations: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Law and Justice 17 (2019) Special Issue on the Politics of Knowledge __________________________________________________________________ VISITING EDITORS Samuli Hurri, University of Lapland, Finland Email: [email protected] Iiris Kestilä, University of Lapland, Finland Email: [email protected] EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Kati Nieminen, University of Helsinki, Finland Email: [email protected] Sanna Mustasaari, University of Helsinki, Finland Email: [email protected] ADVISORY BOARD • Sakari Hänninen, University of Helsinki, Finland • Ari Hirvonen, University of Helsinki, Finland • Samuli Hurri, University of Helsinki, Finland • Pia Letto-Vanamo, University of Helsinki, Finland • Panu Minkkinen, University of Helsinki, Finland • Kimmo Nuotio, University of Helsinki, Finland • Kaarlo Tuori, University of Helsinki, Finland INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD • Peter Becker, University of Vienna, Austria • Joxerramon Bengoetxea, University of the Basque Country, Spain • Emilios Christodoulidis, University of Glasgow, UK • Carlos Closa, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Spain • Julen Etxabe, Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia, Canada • Peter Fitzpatrick, Birkbeck, University of London, UK • Jeanne Gaakeer, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands • Daniel Halberstam, University of Michigan, USA • Rebecca Johnson, University of Victoria, Canada • Juha Karhu, University of Lapland, Finland • Mónica López Lerma, Reed College, USA • Hans-W. Micklitz, European University Institute, Italy • François Ost, Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis, Belgium __________________________________________________________________ No Foundations: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Law and Justice 17 (2019) Special Issue on the Politics of Knowledge __________________________________________________________________ • Jared Del Rosso, University of Denver, USA • Ditlev Tamm, University of Copenhagen, Denmark • Scott Veitch, The University of Hong Kong, China • Gary Watt, University of Warwick, UK • Jeremy Webber, University of Victoria, Canada • James Boyd White, University of Michigan, USA Copyright © 2012 NoFo Layout: Pamela Arslan Publisher: Samuli Hurri ISSN 1797-2264 209 __________________________________________________________________ No Foundations: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Law and Justice 17 (2019) Special Issue on the Politics of Knowledge __________________________________________________________________ TABLE OF CONTENTS Editorial……………………………………………………………………………………………… i ARTICLES The Politics of Knowledge: Introduction Samuli Hurri and Iiris Kestilä . .……………………………………………………………………… 1 ‘Ensnare the Language’: Imagination and Resilience in Indigenous Arts of the Self Julian Reid . ………………………………………………………………………………………… 16 Enhancing Resilience Through Indigenous Traditional Knowledge in Ecological Restoration Punam Noor . ……………………………………………………………………………………… 42 Justice As a Matter of Thinking. Phenomenological Approach Juha Himanka .……………………………………………………………………………………… 60 Towards New Ethics of Sexual Self-determination: Finnish Rape Law through the Speculum of Feminist Philosophy Minni Leskinen ……………………………………………………………………………………… 78 Dao: Cosmological Thinking and Social Practice Matti Nojonen . ………………………………………………………………………………………106 Cosmology and Practices of the European Union Samuli Hurri . ……………………………………………………………………………………… 118 Rural Governance in Australia: The Family Provision Act and the Role of ‘Expert Knowledges’ Malcolm Voyce . …………………………………………………………………………………… 138 The ‘Financial Stability of the Euro Area as a Whole’: Between Jurisdiction and Veridiction Tomi Tuominen . …………………………………………………………………………………… 161 Embodied and Embedded Vulnerable Subject: Asylum Seekers and Vulnerability Theory Laura Tarvainen . …………………………………………………………………………………… 183 Editorial This special issue of No Foundations is dedicated to the politics of knowledge. The politics of knowledge is a recurring theme in all societal critique – not least because of the Foucauldian power/knowledge nexus. We started addressing this theme in a small research community, aptly named as Problematizations. At first our intention was to approach the issue through the ‘hard’ and objective stem sciences as compared to the ‘soft’ and subjective social sciences. Such a distinction between different types of knowledges, however, seemed to contain within itself already a problem, although that problem was not that clear to us in the beginning. However, that problem seemed to be closely intertwined with politics as exercise of power. Our discussions around this question grew into a seminar series, where the issue of politics and knowledge was looked upon from several different perspectives. We were lucky to receive contributions from many excellent academics from a number of disciplines, so that the special issue gathers together a nice variety of approaches to the theme. We express our gratitude towards everyone who contributed to this special issue. What is knowledge or what do we mean by knowledge? During the seminars it became clear that knowledge as a concept covers several possible approaches, theoretical and methodological. The perspectives from which we approach the politics of knowledge in this issue highlights this point well: subjugated knowledges, knowledge as a phenomenological problem, politics of knowing other cultures, and finally the critique of knowledge-based societies. This is in no way an exhaustive list of the ways in which the topic of the politics of knowledge can be approached, but we feel it offers an up-to-date exposition on the theme. After our foray into the politics of knowledge we are next going to focus on an adjoining theme: the role of language in the production of knowledge and politics. Many of the issues that were brought up during our seminars seemed to somehow associate with language. Therefore, we decided to take language as our next problematization. What problems indeed does language include and why do we perceive language as problematic in the first place? The work we started in a small group of scholars will continue in a community that has since grown larger. We look forward to the upcoming discussions in our seminar series. Problematizations Team i The Politics of Knowledge: Introduction Samuli Hurri & Iiris Kestilä* 1. Introduction The politics of knowledge is an open-ended notion that releases a whole variety of critical research possibilities. What we introduce in this volume is collective work by researchers who have come together for one academic year to explore those possibilities.1 The question for us was how different types of knowledge and exercise of power mingle in the governing of societies. At the beginning, we had in mind a number of rather traditional dichotomies whose ‘hybridization’ or ‘deconstruction’ the notion of politics of knowledge seemed to suggest: science and politics, theoretical and practical reasoning, facts and norms, description and prescription, and so forth. How we proceeded from there will be explained shortly. Before that, however, we feel we should say a word on the topicality of our theme. The politics of knowledge is not a new notion and even less a new thing, yet we think that it opens a view on to what is going on in the world at the present time. A couple of years ago, public ridicule of statements by a certain White House press secretary about how many people attended Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony seemed entirely unimportant.2 Ridicule was not so much about that statement as about its subsequent defence by someone else. That defence appeared somewhat obtuse at the time, but also comical and amusing: the Counsellor to the President publicly on television termed the number of attendees as offered by the press secretary not as plain falsehood but as an ‘alternative fact’. As we now know, the waters quickly became more muddied and nothing is amusing about alternative facts any longer. On the one side, there is the rise of cultural, socio-economic and anti-establishment populism that distrusts all knowledge as mere official dogma * Adjunct Professor and Researcher, Universities of Lapland and Helsinki. 1 This was the academic year 2018–2019. The work was organized within the framework of what we have come to call the ‘problematizations seminar’. For its current themes and problems, see <http://ulapland.fi/ Problematizations>. 2 He said it was the ‘largest audience to ever witness an inauguration’. It was quickly established that more people attended Obama’s inauguration in 2009. 1 Samuli Hurri & Iiris Kestilä The Politics of Knowledge: Introduction whose function is to constrain the will of the true people.3 On the other side, there is the uncanny figure of the furious teenager Greta Thunberg speaking before the U.S. Congress and the UN General Assembly and urging everybody to ‘listen to the scientists’ in the face of imminent destruction. The politics of knowledge apparently stands in the midst of these types of development that may sometimes appear very dramatic. They surface in our awareness as broadcast events like any other matter does, but are they perhaps generated by more intricate, less visible contradictions of our Zeitgeist? Should we try to find out whether a steadier current of politics of knowledge exists beneath the headlines, the task first involves capturing its nature, then
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