Lindsay Kelland

As engaged researchers involved in a critical health intervention programme aimed at addressing a number of menstruation-related challenges, we find ourselves being called on to work as activists. Our ability to work alongside community members as activists ensures the success of our public health intervention. However, the fluidity in our understanding of our roles and responsibilities often leaves us in an ethical grey zone relating to consent, anonymity, and confidentiality because of our dual roles as researchers and activists. The boundaries between our relationships with the participants and ourselves as researchers assume relational rather than transactional qualities. Similarly, we have encountered ethical challenges relating to participation and power dynamics which warrant special attention not typically given in traditional ethics review protocols.

In this article, I explore the potential of reciprocal relations of recognition of epistemic agency to respond to calls to transform pedagogical practice in the South African academy and, in particular, to disrupt ongoing epistemic injustice in the academy. First, I put forward a picture of recognition as a practice underpinned by an attitude of playful self-discipline and spend some time elucidating what this attitude involves. Second, I turn to a description of epistemic agents as socially and historically situated knowers with normative status. Third, I bring these discussions together to speak about the practice of recognising our own and one another's epistemic agency. And, finally, I explore how intentionally engaging in this practice might serve to respond to calls to transform pedagogical practice and address epistemic injustice in the academy.

As engaged researchers involved in a critical health intervention programme aimed at addressing a number of menstruation-related challenges, we find ourselves being called on to work as activists. Our ability to work alongside community members as activists ensures the success of our public health intervention. However, the fluidity in our understanding of our roles and responsibilities often leaves us in an ethical grey zone relating to consent, anonymity, and confidentiality because of our dual roles as researchers and activists. The boundaries between our relationships with the participants and ourselves as researchers assume relational rather than transactional qualities. Similarly, we have encountered ethical challenges relating to participation and power dynamics which warrant special attention not typically given in traditional ethics review protocols.

In this paper, I aim to show that part of the harm of male on female rape in patriarchal societies is explained by seeing rape as making good on the threat of sexual objectification. I argue that what takes place in an encounter of sexual objectification can be thought of as establishing an implicit threat which permeates the lived experience of being a woman under patriarchy because of the prevalence, meaning and place of sexual objectification in hegemonic patriarchal ideology. The act of rape makes good on this threat

In this paper, we aim to put forward a view of philosophy that allows for the transformation of the discipline through community engagement activities within the South African higher education context in a way that enhances both the nature of the production and dissemination of philosophical knowledge and the project of philosophy simpliciter. This view contrasts strongly with what we call the dominant ideological paradigm that currently governs the South African philosophical community, and has implications for the ways in which philosophy is taught at universities, and for how philosophers go about conducting research, thinking about their discipline, and considering who is best suited to contribute to the formation of philosophical knowledge. Moreover, this view of philosophy, we suggest, would enable our community to make rich and nuanced contributions to the international community of philosophers, whose views have long held dominance over their African counterparts.

This article explores the various challenges that survivors of rape and sexual violence face when attempting to construct a narrative of their experience under political and epistemic conditions that are not supportive: including the absence of adequate language with which to understand, articulate, and explain their experiences; narrative disruptions at the personal, interpersonal, and social levels; hermeneutical injustice; and canonical narratives that typically further the harms experienced by survivors. In response, I argue that feminist consciousness-raising speak-outs should be revived by contemporary feminists since they are able to do significant work to ameliorate the above-mentioned challenges and thereby aid in the recovery of rape survivors.

We aim to interrogate when the use of images in moral persuasion is legitimate. First, we put forward a number of accounts which purport to show that we can use tools other than logical argumentation to convince others, that such tools evoke affective responses and that these responses have authority in the moral domain. Second, we turn to Sarah McGrath’s account, which focuses on the use of imagery as a means to morally persuade. McGrath discusses 4 objections to the use of imagery, and outlines responses that may be used to legitimate the use of imagery in moral arguments. Assuming that we accept her account and that the invocation of affect has authority in the moral domain, we, using McGrath’s responses, examine whether the use of foetal imagery in anti-abortion campaigns is a legitimate instance of this practice

In this paper I defend the suggestion that narratively understanding her experience of rape can help a survivor in her recovery from the harm that she has suffered. Susan Brison defends a similar suggestion, but, I argue, does not get all of the possible mileage out of narrative understanding because she does not explore what she takes to be the necessary features of a successful narrative itself. I hope to supplement her, primarily relational, account with a richer understanding of narratives themselves, as it is only, I argue, through coming to understand the essential characteristics of a  narrative that we are able to grasp the particular explanatory force of  narratives and, thereby, all of the potential benefits of narratively  understanding her experience for a rape survivor