Caste(d) knowledges: (Self)-problematising epistemic impunity and caste-privilege in academia

Abstract

How can socially privileged researchers engage with as well as analyse marginalising discourses without co-opting the experiences and knowledges of marginalised communities? This inquiry forms the focus of the present article. I discuss the lack of accountability for ‘upper’ caste academics and the resulting impunity for us as ‘knowledge’ producers. I explain how I acknowledge(ed) my complicity in maintaining and reproducing the caste-system and worked towards evolving ethical research practices. A form of inquiry called ‘self-problematisation’ is invoked herein as a ‘practice of the self’, in which researchers must ask ourselves what we come to problematise and what is left unproblematic in our work? This analysis has relevance for questions of ethics and the politics of knowledge production. I appeal to the researchers pondering on questions of positionality and privilege to ask – what can we ‘speak’ about when we speak of (caste) privilege and how must we confront the assumptions of ‘superiority’ in the ‘knowledge’ produced through us?