Emma Crewe (SOAS). Strategic Ignorance, Forgetting and Misrecognition in Parliaments
| Dates: | 3 March 2025 |
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| Times: | 15:00 - 17:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Social Sciences |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, External researchers, Current University students |
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| Speaker: | Emma Crewe |
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Are parliaments past their heyday or have they never had one? Elected representatives claim to represent our interests, for which they need to know what we need or want, and knowledge brokerage is key to their political work. But obviously this is never a politically neutral activity. Hierarchies of knowledge in Parliament emerge out of socio-political hierarchies based on discipline, class, gender and race more than the utility of information. Furthermore, travelling rationalities underlying knowledge are contested and twisted by all sides to promote political goals. Within social theories of knowledge, and scholarship on parliaments, less attention has been given to the strategic production of ignorance. To represent the interests of some people, politicians have to ignore, forget or misrecognise the interests of other people, without appearing cruel or ignorant to their allies. Contrasting two examples: – (a) the promotion of transatlantic trafficking and enslavement of Africans by the Westminster Parliament until the nineteenth century and (b) the recent attack on bipartisan collaboration within the contemporary Texas State legislature, both funded by corporate interests and backed by various Churches, I inquire into whether ignorance as a social process is taking on new meanings and presenting new threats or merely reviving old ones.
Speaker
Emma Crewe
Organisation: SOAS
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
Room 5.205
University Place
Manchester
