Who is the “other”? Epistemic violence and discursive practices

Abstract

My commentary on Held (2020) aims at offering a broader perspective about epistemic violence in psychology while critically examining her positions concerning objectivity and essentialism. Following Michel Foucault, who developed the idea of episteme, that is, the codification and structure that determines the knowledge formation of a given epoch, I suggest that psychology can be regarded as an ideological sociocultural formation and as a discursive practice. In line with these premises, Held’s article can be regarded as a “text,” which, in reproducing the divides between objective versus subjective, folk versus scientific conceptions, relativism versus realism, and so forth, is functional to the maintenance of hegemony. I will focus on the argumentative and discursive strategies that Held adopts in her defense of an objectivist ontology and epistemology against Indigenous and critical psychology.