This Third World Quarterly (TWQ) Special Issue (SI) explores the phenomenon of Epistemic Erasure as the process through which the knowledge systems of marginalized communities are rendered invisible, and how these processes are being resisted. Read the full Special Issue (Understanding Epistemic Erasures: Decolonising Research, Fostering Resistances and Reimagining Alternative Partnerships, Third World Quarterly, Vol 46).
Recent scholarship on Epistemic violence, epistemic injustice and epistemicide has carried out tremendous work to highlight how colonialism, patriarchy, and neoliberalism marginalise non-Western epistemologies. Building on this scholarship, this SI introduces the concept of Epistemic Erasure to foregrounds the paradox that total erasure of local and indigenous epistemologies is untenable, as marginalised epistemologies persist and resist. This theoretical move shifts the focus from documenting epistemological harm to examining the decolonial mobilisations, epistemic resistances, and alternative partnerships that emerge in the wake of erasure.
The SI expands the conversation on marginalised epistemologies to include stories that have yet to be told in the decolonial theory space. It brings together voices from across geographies and disciplines—refugees, Indigenous groups, queer artists, racialised filmmakers, precarious global south academics, and grassroots movements—all sharing stories of knowledge systems under threat, and the creative strategies of resistance they employ.
Through a range of methodologies, from autoethnography to film analysis and body mapping, the contributors ask: Whose epistemologies are still missing from the debate on epistemologies? How are epistemologies being silently erased even within the very same frameworks that aim to highlight and liberate them? And how do communities resist Epistemic Erasure? Together, the papers offer a wider set of conceptual and practical tools for understanding and resisting Epistemic Erasure in the pursuit of more just, plural, and liberatory futures.
“We argue for identifying Epistemic Erasure as a framework that signals an ongoing deliberate, systematic, and often silent attempt to erase entire epistemologies from public discourse, education, memory, and legitimacy, yet fails in the face of community mobilisations.
Rather than leaving the violence at centre stage of the debate on Epistemic violence, this SI highlights the resistances that various groups are organising and teaching both locally and internationally, asserting that while erasure may be attempted, it is nevercomplete..”
Yafa El Masri, University of East Anglia
About the Special Issue Guest Editor
Yafa El Masri
I define myself as both a refugee and a researcher, as this dual identity shapes how I explore Geographies of displacement. I am currently a lecturer in Geography and Global Development in the Global Development Department at the University of East Anglia. My research is focused on spaces of occupation and spaces of waiting, and the decolonial potential that arise between and within them. I have been awarded the Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF) First Book Fellowship for my forthcoming book on how grassroots forms of refugee-led cooperation transform and sustain spaces of protracted displacement.
