Reworking Prejudice in Qualitative Inquiry With Gadamer and De/Colonizing Onto-Epistemologies

Abstract

In this article, the authors explore prejudice from Gadamerian and de/colonial perspectives, grounded in methodological discourses of qualitative inquiry. Using a vignette of a typical conversation in a dissertation defense, the authors perform a Gadamerian and de/colonial reading informed by Anzaldúa, Mohanty, Smith, and Chakravorty Spivak. Through these readings the authors enact a fusion of horizons, a possibility forwarded by Gadamer as a critique of Enlightenment-based onto-epistemologies, which situate prejudice as a reminder to engage in expansive knowledge-making moves. De/colonial scholars add arguments about positionality and the need to engage with one’s own stuck places, places of contradictions and tensions, and conditions that cultivate deep introspection. The politics of evidence-based research continues to stifle and discipline the ways in which qualitative research can be engaged. Therefore, the authors offer possibilities in this article that would allow movement from Enlightenment-based onto-epistemologies to other more fluid and culturally situated expansive spaces of knowledge construction.

Keywords

de/colonial Gadamer prejudice bias higher education

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