Epistemic Counterinsurgency: Residential School Denialism as a Politics of Ignorance

Abstract

In this thesis, I develop the concept of epistemic counterinsurgency in order to explain the persistence and intensification of residential school denialism as a politics of ignorance. For this purpose I draw upon the epistemology of ignorance and theories of epistemic injustice and resistance. I begin with Marilyn Frye’s introduction of the concepts of white ignorance and arrogant perception, continue with the greatly expanded concept of white ignorance by Charles Mills and his theory of white supremacy as a political system, examine Miranda Fricker’s theory of epistemic injustice, as well as Gaile Pohlhaus Jr.’s expansion of epistemic injustice with her theory of willful hermeneutical ignorance, before turning to José Medina’s theory of epistemic resistance, and finally looking at Anna Cook’s theory of settler ignorance. I use the U.S. Counterinsurgency Manual along with the work of critical scholars to develop an expansive definition of counterinsurgency grounded in its primary source material, and employ this definition in the conceptualization of epistemic counterinsurgency as a distinct aspect and form of counterinsurgency that responds to what I call epistemic rebellion, a form of intensified epistemically resistant activity that subverts oppressive political conditions. Then I examine the general state and nature of settler denial before attending to the specific form of residential school denial, and apply my concept of epistemic counterinsurgency to residential school denialism in order to qualify it as a form of epistemic counterinsurgency and politics of ignorance that aims to suppress Indigenous political resistance and their epistemic rebellion of making the genocidal nature and intent of the residential school system known and unignorable.