Epistemologies of Ignorance, Kelsey

For me, the epistemology of ignorance means the ways in which people choose not to know certain things, or at least how they choose to think that they don't know these things. Knowledge is never complete. Knowing always produces un-knowing because to know something to be true is to know opposing ideas/concepts to be un-true. Saying that something is an indisputable fact often leaves no room for alternative modes of understanding. For example, if a person knows for a fact that God created the Earth in seven days, they may choose not to know certain evidence that scientists have produced to discredit this "fact". Furthermore, when scientists label their evidence and knowledge that they produce as facts, they leave no room for alternative ways of understanding creation and knowledge as spiritual and ontological as well as scientific.

In less theoretical terms, people often choose, whether consciously or not, to ignore certain realities for various reasons. Many white Americans choose to ignore the existence of systematic racism because as far as they're concerned racial inequality was eradicated with the abolition of slavery and the subsequent civil rights movement. Even though they may see, literally with their eyes, the fact that race inequality and economic inequality correlate strongly. Some people choose to believe that racism only exists in very rare, blatant forms, and by refusing to listen and explore knowledge that they may not have, they rely on what they "know" to be true, that systematic racism is not existent and powerful.

I think it's important to note that the comparison of knowledge and ignorance is sort of a Western way of thinking, and for some people and cultures it is not always true that if one idea is true all others are false. Contradictions can be embraced and understood as natural in certain cultures.