Material Witnesses: A Feminist Disability Theory of Testimonial Voices
Open Access
- Author:
- Schriempf, Alexa
- Graduate Program:
- Philosophy
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- March 29, 2010
- Committee Members:
- Dr Shannon Sullivan, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Shannon Wimberley Sullivan, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Vincent M Colapietro, Committee Member
John Philip Christman, Committee Member
Jennifer Mensch, Committee Member
Susan Merrill Squier, Committee Member - Keywords:
- neo-materialist feminism
testimony
epistemology
disability - Abstract:
- Although Western philosophies of communication and testimony claim to focus only on the content and meaning of given communications, I argue that these conceptions are based on an epistemic standard that privileges clear-and-distinct speech over other spoken or communicated expressions. I refer to this standard as “articulateness,” and show that this standard is taken to be the measure of epistemic credibility on the part of speakers. This illusory standard has profound effects on the legitimacy of non-articulate testimonies, leading to their exclusions from the epistemologies of testimony and other social-political spheres such as courtrooms, classrooms, and parliaments. Those who have non-articulate voices include primarily, but is not limited to, those who have communication difficulties, such as stutters, cerebral palsy, deafness, autism, thoracic weakness, cleft palates, paralysis, and cognitive disabilities. The failure to have a more inclusive model of testimony is revealed by reflecting on the phenomenon of bodily self-control that is expected of fully rational knowers. Articulateness is a social and epistemic problem that emerges from carnal presuppositions that privilege and normalize able-bodiedness as a precondition for the credible witness. In examining accounts of non-articulate witnesses, I stress the need for a model of inclusive testimony. This dissertation is organized as follows: In chapter 2, I provide an overview of two major philosophers whose views on speaking and communicating have had profound effect on Western philosophy (Aristotle and Locke). This investigation seeks to establish (1) that logos is rooted in materially clear-and-distinct speech, and (2) that modern theory of communication established in part by Locke is based on a code of intelligibility that has normative carnal presuppositions about credible speech. In chapter 3 and chapter 4, I demonstrate how current models of testimonial credibility (i.e. contemporary analytic epistemology of testimony and feminist epistemology) are called into question by the existence of materially non-articulate voices. Current theories on testimonial credibility do not have the means to fully include non-articulate voices unless they undertake to revise the normative carnal presuppositions inherent in their ontological approaches to epistemology. In chapter 5, I adopt an alternate ontology of materiality proposed by neo-materialist feminism and suggest a model for communication based on the concept of testimonial voice not as speech but as “communicability.” In my conclusion, I outline some possibilities for assessing testimony through communicability in ways that at once include a wider variety of voices but also avoids a valueless relativism.