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Solidarity with Chrystul Kizer: On Disparate Failures of Knowledge-Attribution and Survivors of Sexual Violence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 December 2023

Ayanna De'Vante Spencer Open the ORCID record for Ayanna De'Vante Spencer [Opens in a new window]
Ayanna De'Vante Spencer*
Affiliation:
Girls for Gender Equity (GGE), 25 Chapel St, Suite 1006, Brooklyn, NY 11201
*
Email: aspencerphd@gmail.com
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Abstract

I write in solidarity with Chrystul Kizer, a criminalized Black teen survivor of sexual violence in Wisconsin, to detail how her ongoing legal fight occurs in a tilted sociopolitical and epistemological landscape with weighted opponents. I offer a theory of disparate failures of knowledge-attribution for survivors of sexual violence, a structural epistemological problem that I call constructed pragmatic encroachment (CPE). CPE explains that pragmatic encroachment is a nonneutral knowledge-attribution problem whereby attributors are empowered to affirm or deny a subject's knowledge-claim based on the subject's constructed practical stakes. Constructed practical stakes here refers to the potential costs/consequences of acting on knowledge of some p for some subject, “S,” constructed by their practical environment. Examining CPE in Kizer's self-defense case, I highlight why real-world pragmatic encroachment is exceptionally alarming for survivors of sexual violence, especially criminalized survivors. The epistemological problem is not merely whether people in powerful positions are frequently fallible, but the convergence of sociopolitical and epistemic power to deny what survivors know about our own experiences of violence, and power to punish survivors for acting on what we know.

Type
Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 38 , Special Issue 4: Intersectional Epistemologies: The Ethics and Politics of Epistemic Practice , Fall 2023 , pp. 707 - 725
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hypatia, a Nonprofit Corporation

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