University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

The Sankofa Intervention: Combatting the epistemicide of parasitic omission through civil rights literacy in community information contexts

Patin, Beth; Youngman, Tyler

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117951

Description

Title
The Sankofa Intervention: Combatting the epistemicide of parasitic omission through civil rights literacy in community information contexts
Author(s)
  • Patin, Beth
  • Youngman, Tyler
Issue Date
2022-10
Keyword(s)
  • Epistemicide
  • Parasitic omission
  • Beneficent gatekeeping
  • Third harm
  • Civil rights literacy
  • Epistemic injustice
  • Critical librarianship
  • Digital humanities
  • Archives
  • Information ethics
Abstract
Rocket City Civil Rights (RCCR) disrupts hegemonic epistemic history by reimagining community histories and driving social change through community collections derived from local libraries, archives, museums, digital projects and learning resources. This work amplifies the roles community information collections play in addressing epistemicide and epistemic injustices. Epistemicide is the annihilation of a way of knowing and its injustices are harmful to our capacity of knowing. We present specific tools used to suppress knowledge including parasitic omission and beneficent gatekeeping. We interrupt these tools and methods of epistemicide through the utilization of Sankofic principles, which in our context means going back and collecting the narratives that have been omitted in our community's history, curriculum, and collective narrative. Using RCCR as a case study, this research demonstrates how building civil rights literacy can help correct generational harm by amplifying the missing narratives within our communities, thus deriving new insights for LIS education.
Series/Report Name or Number
Proceedings of the ALISE Annual Conference, 2022
Type of Resource
text
Language
eng
Handle URL
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117951
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21900/j.alise.2022.10677
Copyright and License Information
  • Copyright 2022 Beth Patin, Tyler Youngman
  • This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).

Owning Collections

Proceedings of the ALISE Annual Conference: ALISE 2022 PRIMARY
Go Back and Get It: From One Narrative to Many