Knowing Otherwise Race, Gender, and Implicit Understanding

by Alexis Shotwell

Prejudice is often not a conscious attitude: because of ingrained habits in relating to the world, one may act in prejudiced ways toward others without explicitly understanding the meaning of one's actions. Similarly, one may know how to do certain things, like ride a bicycle, without being able to articulate in words what that knowledge is. These are examples of what Alexis Shotwell discusses in Knowing Otherwise as phenomena of "implicit understanding." Presenting a systematic analysis of this concept, she highlights how this kind of understanding may be used to ground positive political and social change, such as combating racism in its less overt and more deep-rooted forms.

Shotwell begins by distinguishing four basic types of implicit understanding: nonpropositional, skill-based, or practical knowledge; embodied knowledge; potentially propositional knowledge; and affective knowledge. She then develops the notion of a racialized and gendered "common sense," drawing on Gramsci and critical race theorists, and clarifies the idea of embodied knowledge by showing how it operates in the realm of aesthetics. She also examines the role that both negative affects, like shame, and positive affects, like sympathy, can play in moving us away from racism and toward political solidarity and social justice. Finally, Shotwell looks at the politicized experience of one's body in feminist and transgender theories of liberation in order to elucidate the role of situated sensuous knowledge in bringing about social change and political transformation.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, Race, LGBT, Disability Studies, Gender

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Alexis Shotwell is associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Department of Philosophy at Carleton University. She is author of Knowing Otherwise: Race, Gender, and Implicit Understanding.

Reviews

[Patty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was thinking this would be a solid three stars (useful, thoughtful but not especially impactful) and then had a complete, full-blown sobbing meltdown in the last chapter. Amazing stuff

[Ella McLaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can’t wait to get into more contemporary philosophers! Shotwell’s idea of implicit understanding just clicks. She talks about it in such practical and important ways regarding current world issues and calls for social justice in, again, very practical ways. We LOVE practical philosophy!

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Only a woman could have written this. [I want to add that only a Canadian could have written this, but acknowledge that’s going too far.] Shotwell out-reasons the slavish devotees of reason, putting aside such reductive one-to-one methods of connection that have dominated Western political philosophy for a good long while. And she actively opposes the hero worship of propositional knowledge, putting the limelight on the long-neglected intuitive and inarticulable knowledge.

Like I said. Only a woman could have written this. It’s a men’s academia, and women who survive and thrive in its territory necessarily have demonstrated the ability to think like a man. You can’t fuck with the rules until you’ve played by them, and by reason of tradition, academia is still predominantly structured to pursue male-type methods of thought.

One is not inherently better than the other, nor do I claim it’s nature or nurture that produces such differences, but my point is that a woman in academia can think like both a man and like a woman, or else she wouldn’t be in academia. But very few men are capable of approaching academic topics as a woman.

Go Professor Shotwell. Also she cites Bartky, so automatic +1000.

Also, she’s not only an elegant & persuasive philosopher, she’s a beautiful writer (and we all know, the field of philosophy has plenty of shit writers who are nevertheless good philosophers. Stand up Hegel.) Some gigantic quotes:

"Shame might be its own poltergeist, rearranging the conceptual and affective furniture of our mental spaces without our permission but perhaps with our intent. Shame represents being thrown into the self you are that you also repudiate, a self you don't want to be. This implies a self you also are, a self you want to be. Out of concern for justice we might respond to shame by changing our selves and our worlds. We might respond with solidarity. But it will be important to consider where we come by a concern for justice, and we must remember that- contra many academics who use conceptions of haunting flippantly- being haunted tends to be terrifying."

"Given the widespread refusal and avoidance of negative affects in many social spaces in North America in particular, and an implicit idea that the purpose of life is to be endlessly comfortable and at ease, it is worthwhile to encourage socially and self-identified white people to lean in to the sharp points of discomfort frequently attached to racism rather than cushioning ourselves from it."

“Though it can feel core-deep, shame marks a nonessential relational self, one that is by nature malleable… Shame reveals something you ‘were then,’ perhaps ‘are now,’ but also [reveals] a self you refuse in the fact of feeling ashamed. The experience of shame implies a repudiation of who one was then, and carries the sense that one also was not, inherently, that shamed self. In other words, the experience of shame in the face of racism— one’s own or other people’s— discloses both present racism and also potential for antiracist praxis, embedded in the desire to deny the racist self.”

“On the one hand, the fact that we’ll still need the funk after the revolution is about recognizing the importance of imagining current pleasure as part of a longed-for future (you can dance to it). On the other, I take Kelley to make the deeper point that in thinking about social justice movements, intellectuals do ill to minimize explorations of freedom and love.”

[هاجر العتيبي · Rating 1 out of 5]

الكتاب يتناول قضايا كبيرة مثل العرق والجندر والمعرفة الضمنية، وهي مواضيع كنت أتوقع منها أن تفتح لي أفقًا جديدًا في التفكير، لكن للأسف، لم أشعر أن الكتاب قدّم لي هذا العمق المتوقع.

أحد أكبر مشكلاتي مع الكتاب هو أنه كان مشتتًا. كل فصل بدا وكأنه بحث مستقل، بدلاً من أن تكون الفصول متكاملة في تكوين رؤية متماسكة. على سبيل المثال، الفصل الأول كان ربما الأكثر وضوحًا، حيث قدّم استعراضًا جيدًا لنظريات المعرفة الضمنية. ولكن بعد ذلك، الأمور بدأت تتعقد دون سبب واضح. لم يكن من السهل ربط الأفكار ببعضها البعض، وفي النهاية شعرت أن الكتاب لم يصل إلى نقطة واضحة أو ختام مقنع.

أما الأسلوب، فقد وجدت نفسي أحيانًا أشعر أن الوضوح لم يكن الهدف الرئيسي للكاتبة. الأسلوب الغامض والتعابير المعقدة جعلت الكتاب يبدو أثقل مما ينبغي. في بعض الأحيان، كنت أتوقف لأفكر: "ما الذي تحاول الكاتبة قوله هنا؟". كان هناك الكثير من الاقتباسات والآراء التي لم أتمكن من تحديد ما إذا كانت الكاتبة تتبناها أو تنتقدها. هذا الغموض جعلني أشعر بالتشتت أكثر مما كنت أتوقعه من كتاب يتناول هذا النوع من المواضيع.

هناك فصل عن الجماليات، لكنني لم أجد فيه الكثير من النقاط اللافتة. في الواقع، شعرت أن هذا الفصل كان واحدًا من الأضعف في الكتاب. بشكل عام، كان لدي انطباع أن كل فصل كان يمكن أن يكون مقالًا منفصلًا، أو ربما كتابًا بحد ذاته.

قرأت الكتاب في الثاني و العشرين من يونيو 2019، وأجريت التدقيق اللغوي في الثامن عشر من سبتمبر 2024.

[Nieslowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shotwell examines implicit understanding and its relation to cultural driven commonsense, she argues that implicit epistemology/different ways of knowing/ plays a vital role in the reproduction of gendered and racial formation.

This book gives you a deeper insight into epistemologies of ignorance, while also attending to white shame and solidarity. It is an essential tool to understand social movements and political transformation, that constituted the space for the aesthetic, in order to imagine worlds that have not yet existed. To imagine radically otherwise.

[Madeline]

I can't tell if Alexis Shotwell has left philosophy or if she was never "properly" in philosophy in the first place - anyway, I hope her new department lets her do more philosophy stuff.

As far as I can tell, there isn't another book like this one just yet - which is a shame. There are some problems with Knowing Otherwise, and the chapter on aesthetics was not . . . great. Generally, I would say it doesn't feel like clarity was the aim of the book; but there's plenty of stuff in it to think about beyond "what does this sentence mean, though?" (The most frustrating thing was teasing out which parts of other people's views she was adopting and which she was presenting for critique or a sufficient grounding in the area.) I think the introduction (or first chapter?) is really good, and features some wonderful use of metaphor.

The reading group I was in for this kind of petered out so I don't know if I'll ever get around to the last chapter or two. And as somebody else in the group said, it felt like every chapter should have been either its own paper or its own book.

[Abby · Rating 3 out of 5]

some good ideas, but at the same time the chapters feel pretty disjointed, and the end seems a little incomplete in concluding the work. The best part, I think, is her survey of theories of implicit knowledge in Chapter 1.