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Cuestiones de Filosofía, 8 (31), 17-39.
https://doi.org/10.19053/01235095.v8.n31.2022.14363
Migración y violencia epistémica
Migration and Epistemic Violence
1
Bianca Boteva-Richter
2
University of Vienna, Austria
Universität Wien, Austria
Recepción: 24 de mayo del 2022
Evaluación: 13 de noviembre del 2022
Aceptación: 15 de noviembre del 2022
1 Traducción del alemán por James Garrison.
2 Dra. en Filosofía por la Universidad de Viena (Austria), bajo la asesoría de Franz Martin Wimmer y
Helmuth Vetter. Docente externa en el Instituto de Filosofía de la Universidad de Viena y miembro
de la Escuela Internacional de Filosofía Intercultural (EIFI).
ORCID: 0000-0001-9674-9910
Correo electrónico: bianca.boteva-richter@univie.ac.at
Cuestiones de Filosofía
ISSN: 0123-5095
E-ISSN: 2389-9441
Vol. 8 – Nº 31
Julio - diciembre, año 2022
pp. 17 - 39
Artículo de Investigación
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Cuestiones de Filosofía No. 31 - Vol. 8 Año 2022 ISSN 0123-5095 Tunja-Colombia
Resumen
En este artículo se intenta situar la violencia epistemológica, así como des-
entrañar y desenmascarar las estructuras de poder, incluyendo los puntos
de fricción entre el individuo migrante y la comunidad local. Asimismo, se
presenta un nuevo tipo de sujeto que, por un lado, revela las estructuras de
poder inherentes al individuo y a la sociedad que lo comprende y, por otro
–a través del modelo ampliado de existencia–, ofrece oportunidades para una
convivencia que estaría marcada por la solidaridad y la equidad, y que se
produciría a través de conexiones interpersonales. Utilizando ejemplos de
las estructuras de poder en los cursos de idiomas, en las universidades y en la
pérdida de valores culturales a través de la migración, se rastrea la violencia
epistémica y se presenta de forma no solo teórica, sino también factual.
Palabras clave: poder epistémico, migración, losofía intercultural, loso-
fía japonesa.
Abstract
In this article an attempt is made to localize epistemological violence, as
well as to unravel and unmask power structures, including points of friction
between the migrating individual and the local community. Also, a new type
of subject is presented, which, on the one hand, reveals the power structures
inherent in the individual and in the society containing it and, on the other
hand –through the extended model of existence–, oers opportunities for a
coexistence, which would be marked by solidarity and fairness, and would
occur through interpersonal connections. Using examples of power struc-
tures in language courses, in universities, and in the loss of cultural values
through migration, epistemic violence is tracked and presented not only theo-
retically, but also factually.
Keywords: epistemic power, migration, intercultural philosophy, japanese
philosophy.
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Boteva-Richter, B. (2022). Migración y violencia epistémica.
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Introduction
Bombs, Bombs, Bombs, Fire, War and death!
To reect on theorems in times of such bloody facticity, even if they promote
justice, may seem absurd or even mocking; in the midst of the raging fratrici-
dal war between Russia and Ukraine, we are dealing with real violence; with
the killing women and children, and also with violence against the very young,
almost childlike soldiers who are being manipulated into a future of loss.
Worrying about epistemic violence or justice at such times seems like lling
a theoretical bubble or asking questions that promote elitist relationships
beyond actual realities. After all, theorems cannot bring about peace, stop
violence, or even threateningly raise a hand in in the face of such madness.
So why then? Why, despite this madness, should it still be written about and
why is it necessary or even essential to deal with topics such as epistemic
violence today?
It is the case that we must write despite the daily horror and adversity be-
cause this is about our future and that is why one cannot remain silent. And
it is not just about any future, but one in which disadvantage, discrimina-
tion, humiliation, and disenfranchisement are minimized and memory is to
be generated and worked out for future generations in a manner exceeding
Eurocentric, colonial, and capitalist practices and records.
I hope that theoretical reections can help here, for example by uncovering
epistemic violence and thereby oering curbs on the violence of epistemol-
ogy and constructing a basis for a more just future. And above all, one thing
is clear: violence is no pure physical experience; it is existential and reaches
deep into the ontological realm of the socio-individual aspects of human ex-
istence. On the one hand this has to do with individual experience and events,
marking the limits of our vulnerability through the bodily framework. On the
other hand, however, this is embedded in geopolitical developments and thus
marks the social framework for the good life or for subliminal practices that
Dedicated to my father:
An actor, writer, and migrant,
as well as to my mother:
A teacher and later a gardener
and migrant
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set up and support systems of disregard and abuse through “agents of ‘con-
sciousness’ and discourses” (Foucault, 2021, p. 54). This is because there
exist systems of power, and not only a few of them, which prevent and ma-
nipulate “discourses and knowledge” and which “burrow [themselves] very
deeply, very subtly into the entire network of society” (p. 54).
Power, violence, and episteme are thus deeply inscribed in the socio-indi-
vidual events of existence and cannot be analyzed separately from each oth-
er in physical-psychological particles. However, to track and investigate the
connection or “totalization processes” (p. 52). in their full breadth, it is not
sucient to use there a narrowly European model of the subject as a basis.
There is a need for an expanded understanding of the subject as both individ-
ually and socially constituted, which therefore oscillates between all facets of
power structures
3
. Because epistemic violence, as the dark side of power, not
only knows how to control knowledge and thus establish and support elites,
but also how to condemn people to invisibility, deprive them of language, and
steer future generations toward harm. Epistemic violence is thus expressed
in the empowerment of those who are already powerful and in the theft of
speech from the disempowered. In this regard the powerful speak “for” the
enfranchised, but “without” them. The powerful demand rights for those who
already have a louder voice and who even more impertinently and hypocrit-
ically pose themselves as “proxy…[even] making it their job to speak for
others” thus further expanding and consolidating their own power (p. 55).
It is therefore essential to deal with the connection between violence and
knowledge, or rather with the violence in knowledge, to cease this outcry
and to demand a space for the voice of those who deserve to be noticed. For
this purpose, however, studies that merely criticize and show no way out of
hopelessness are useless and ultimately unnecessary. In order to show a way
out of this situation, the connection between subject, power, and episteme
should be tracked and grasped in terms of its entire structure and then dis-
sected with the necessary sharpness that facticity demands. To enable this,
the subject, its violence, and the connection to knowledge should be exam-
ined introspectively so that “(…) relationships, which in reality are closely
intertwined, support and serve as instruments for each other (…)” (p. 252)
can be disclosed and analyzed in individual detail as well as in concert.
3 For more on this point, please see the second section.
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Subject, Violence, and Knowledge
When it comes to the connection between episteme and violence, the
Eurocentric/monocultural orientation as to how knowledge is generated has
been criticized in recent decades, be it in decolonial theories, in political
philosophy, sociology (of the Global South) or even in anthropology. This
concerns criticism of “abyssal thinking,” and “ontological degradation”; it is
about the “epistemologies of the north”
4
.
Clearly, it has been worked out to whom the grievances are addressed: the
accused is the European subject as historically elaborated and established
in Western European thinking. With its ambitious, elitist “monoculture of
knowledge” this subject suppresses the plurality of the world’s stocks of
knowledge and celebrates itself as the ruler over (other) people and even
over the phenomena of nature (Escobar, 2020, p. 43). The Western European,
and I expressly emphasize this point, because there is no Western-Eastern
European subject
5
that has risen and established itself in the history of phi-
losophy, and has been viewed and identied as individual, self-centered as
well as self-loving, economized, liberal and patriarchal
6
. It was predom-
inantly Greek-Western European and male philosophers such as Aristotle,
Descartes, Hegel and Heidegger who made sure of that (Klaus and Buhr,
1985, p. 1189-1900).
The development of the subject is thus well documented in (Western)
European philosophy: already in Aristotle, the subject is both the “(…) perma-
nent bearer of objective properties and the logical subject (…)” (p. 1189), the
“recognizing” being (St. Thomas Aquinas), as well as the active ‘I’ (Fichte)
that produces “reality” or even the “bearer of the world” (Schopenhauer) (p.
1189). It is a “(…) self-consciousness of the human being that, as a deter-
mination of the ‘absolute idea’ pushing for self-knowledge, produces itself
through active operation by practically and theoretically appropriating the
world, the ‘realized idea’” (p. 1189)
7
.
And here, already in this brief retrospective of how the subject has been
elaborated, it becomes apparent how the Western European ‘I’ produces itself
4 de Sousa Santos, B. (2020).
5 For alternative elaborations of the subject from Eastern Europe, see, for example Zwalen (2010).
6 See Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Claudia Brunner, Rada Ivanovic, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and
many others.
7 Emphasis mine.
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predominantly and not further others; i.e., it generates itself and leaves the
world and its appearances as objects outside. It is thus possible to guess what
started the seeds of alienation of the self from others or the self from the
world, from nature and its phenomena; it is the European (and, more precise-
ly, the Greek-Western European) ‘I’ as subject dominating nature (Ritter et
al., 1984, p. 477) and as a solitary monad, competing and occasionally strate-
gically fraternizing with other selves, constructing a world far removed from
the socio-cosmological structure envisioned in some non-European cultures.
The West-European ‘I’, i.e., the subject that has distinguished itself and as-
serted itself worldwide through colonization and capitalism, through cruelty
and arrogance, is a self-absorbed, narcissistic subject, separated from nature
and wanting to dominate it
8
.
This is an “isolated individual relating to itself essentially contemplative-
ly” (Klaus and Buhr, 1985, p. 1189) and speaking alone to itself as well as
principally questioning itself (Heidegger, 1993, pp. 5-7, 12). This Western
European ‘I’ tries to get a grip on nature and phenomena around it, but above
all it manages to objectify and disrespect this nature and its miracles, thereby
bringing, in a single word to be read literally and guratively-contamination.
However, this absolutist, yet also autistic model clearly testies, in its lonely
superiority, to violence and violent tendencies with its domination of nature
and of other non-Western European subjects. Above all, it testies to vio-
lence, which is understood as “the use of means of power to enforce certain
intentions against the intentions of other people” (Klaus and Buhr, 1985, p.
500). The Western European (and since the 18
th
century, also the American)
‘I’, generates violence through the domination of nature, the exploitation of
resources, and the subordination and silencing the people by way of debase-
ment based on class and race
9
. But despite this pessimistic diagnosis how
can this subject be better understood? And how can one delve into one’s own
structures to unravel the entanglements of power and violence, which are
clearly knitted together individually and socially? (Foucault, 2021, p. 241).
In order to position the subject on a basis with solidarity on the one hand,
but also in order to understand the indicative-correlative relationships, which
in turn include practices and records of power on the other hand, alternative
8 See Boteva-Richter, B. (2022a).
9 For more on this, see the works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Homi K. Bhabha, Frantz Fanon,
Judith Butler, Walter Mignolo, Nikita Dhawan, and many others.
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ontological models are needed that might initiate and support such investiga-
tions. So relational ontologies with an alternative understanding of existence,
which depict people inhabiting the world in its reality and not as occupying
its being, are needed here (Escobar, 2020, pp. 45-46). This also requires elab-
orations of existence that would be situated in an alternative time-space re-
lationship and understanding and that would reect –in a global context– the
living environment of people and nature. Such a model, and it is important to
emphasize that this is only one possibility among many, is provided by nin-
gen 人間, i.e., the notion of relational “human-between” existence advanced
by the Japanese philosopher Watsuji Tetsurō 和辻 哲郎.
Watsuji Tetsurō
10
, who is known as the leading gure of the new Japanese
cultural-synthetic ethics and for his works Ethics as a Science of Man (Ningen
no Gaku Toshite no Rinrigaku)
11
and Ethics (Rinrigaku), generated the con-
cept of ningen or “human-between” as referring to relational individual-so-
cial existence. The human being is, according him, a “self-active” subject
who is interwoven in a socially natural network and lives and acts in mul-
tiple connections, between person and society, but also between person and
nature. Here, in this elaboration of existence, which is based on Buddhist-
Shinto roots, the human being is an individual-social-climatic being, acts
simultaneously as individual and as society, and transcends nature and its
phenomena
12
.
10 “Watsuji Tetsurō (1889–1960) was one of a small group of philosophers in Japan during the twen-
tieth century who brought Japanese philosophy to the world. He wrote important works on both
Eastern and Western philosophy and philosophers, from ancient Greek, to Schopenhauer, Nietzsche,
Kierkegaard and Heidegger, and from primitive Buddhism and ancient Japanese culture, to Dōgen
(whose now famous writings Watsuji single-handedly rediscovered), aesthetics and Japanese ethics.
His works on Japanese ethics are still regarded as the denitive studies. Inuenced by Heidegger,
Watsuji’s Climate and Culture is both an appreciation of, and a critique of Heidegger” (Carter et al.,
2019). Watsuji created the concept of ‘ningen,’ which means that “human beings have a dual-na-
ture, as individuals, and as member of various social groupings” (2019). Unfortunately, he was
involved, together with other philosophers of the so-called Kyoto School, in the nationalist debate
that occurred between 1941 and 1942. Watsuji wanted to create an East Asian/Japanese opposition
to Eurocentrism, but in doing so he played into the hands of the military regime. Later, he publicly
regretted his position and his silence. For more on the role of the Kyoto School in the nationalism
debate, please see: Heisig and Maraldo (1995).
11 Ethics as a Science of Man, published in 1936, introduces the famous reworking of the term “hu-
man-in-between” or “ningen 人間” in Japanese. This important work of Japanese ethics was trans-
lated quite well into German by Hans Martin Krammer, but unfortunately it has never been trans-
lated into English. See: Watsuji, T. (2005).
12 See Watsuji’s Fūdo (1995).
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Watsuji avoids observing the human being as a merely individual being, as
he states, that we all are ningen 人間, i.e., persons, who “possess this dual
structure, as something subjective. The implication is that ningen, although
being subjective communal existence as the interconnection of acts, is at the
same time an individual that acts through these connections. This subjective
and dynamic structure does not allow us to account for ningen as ‘thing’ or
‘substance’” (1996, p. 19).
This is very important, because unlike as happens in European-American
philosophy, in which the subject can very well denote things and substance
and yet is separate from objects and from the world as a human being, Watsuji
models a being that plays all the roles: it is a dual, relational existence that
is generated and destroyed again through the “negation of the negation”: in
one moment the individual aspect predominates and the human being is, for
example, predominantly a woman, someone’s wife, mother, colleague, or a
member of a family, a company, a country. Here one lives out their individual
relationships and intimate interdependencies.
But this ‘I’ is nonetheless not only individualistic, as the society is also inher-
ent in it. Therefore, in the next moment, through the previously mentioned
relationships, social consciousness outrages egoistic goals within the small
personal structure. As a result, the individual aspect must be overcome by
negating it with all strength so that society in the ‘I’ can take over leadership
from this point forward. Then the ‘I’ is now a social whole, living and gen-
erating history and sharing memory, functioning as a citizen or as part of a
country, nation, or group as a member of a formation (pp. 87-90, 113-117).
This social side cannot exist in the long run either though, because there is
a danger of losing oneself as an individual with their own characteristics
and thus fading in everything big and social; so, the social is now bitterly
fought and the individual ‘I’ appears again anew in its existence (pp. 23,
117). Existence is, when viewed from all sides, an individual-social exis-
tence, which in its spiral structure is alternatively spatio-temporally designed
as a double helix (individual-social).
Watsuji represents spatial expansion in terms of public versus private
existence with the help of transport and communication. It is determined
as a “connection of meanings” (p. 37) and denes human connections as
friendship, business relationships, intimate relationships, or relationships
in the public realm. Everything is thereby closely networked and lived, as
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the connections bind and determine the ‘I’ with the ‘we’ and vice versa.
Watsuji writes:
The spatiality of human being is known to everybody in an ontic way. People
use transportation facilities and behave in a special fashion for the benet of
their ordinary lives (…) [but] Does the Thou
13
who stands beside me indicate
that Thou, as a natural object, stands beside me in a spatial fashion? (...) Does
the fact that I feel lonely because I am far apart from, Thou mean not so much
that this subjective Thou with whom I fell in love is far away, as that this
Thou, as natural object, is far away from me spatially? (p. 156).
The philosopher is aware of the futility of such questions, but he sharpens
them to the point where he wants to show the indivisibility of ‘I’ and ‘you’,
and thus of ‘I’ and ‘we’, as well as wanting to show precisely how he bases
spatial extension on sensory connections and to show that existence is in fact
so constituted. In order to work out the spatial expansion even more clearly
and to secure it against purely noematic representations (p. 159), Watsuji
uses the example of the interruption to communications that took place af-
ter an earthquake struck the Kanto region in September 1923. Telephone
lines and thus communication generally were interrupted by the earthquake,
which partly isolated people from each other and in any case fragmented so-
ciety. The public cracked and spatial awareness developed in terms of inner
vs. outer (p. 159). The split and the subsequent suering of not being able
to know the fate of a person’s loved ones reveals both the inseparability of
‘I’ and ‘we’ as well as the spatial expansion of individual social existence,
expressed through the existence or interruption of communication channels
(pp. 158-159)
14
. On this point, Watsuji writes:
The spatiality exhibited by these phenomena of human transportation and
communication is clearly subjective extendedness. It interconnects both
subjectively and practically but lacks the same extendedness as objective
thing. This subjective extendedness arises because human beings, despite
dividing themselves into great number of subjects, nevertheless, strive to
constitute a connection among themselves (p. 165).
This spatial extension of existence, which is lived out through subjective
connections and is determined by not just an inner, but also an outer, spatial
13 Original author’s emphasis.
14 Something similar is happening right now in 2022, as Russia is trying to control the communica-
tions of its own citizens and is even attempting to establish an internal internet of its own, and to
separate the own citizens from the world.
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consciousness and reveals society in the self (and not vice versa), is indivi-
dual, but at the same time strives for a social union, which, if things are as
previously shown, causes suering and fragmentation.
But it is not only spatiality that is elaborated by Watsuji through the expla-
nation of transport and communication. The temporality of existence is also
shaped in a similar way where he presents the dual structure of existence as
individual-social. He writes:
When we begin to walk, this walking activity is already determined by a
denite “place to go”. That is, to say, going to our workplace or to a friend’s
house and so forth exists beforehand as directions for our walking activity (…)
Beyond the present consciousness of the walker, this “already beforehand”
has the signicance of being the manner of her present existence (p. 182).
This transportation of the human as specically going reveals an alternative
time, which also shows itself, as well as the structure of existence, in a spiral
movement of one at the same time from what is been-now-future:
One goes to one’s workplace or pays a visit to one’s friend, only because a
denite state of labour or of friendly relationships “already” somehow exists.
Hence, it is not that the past betweenness that obtained until yesterday is
now gone, having somehow perished; it exists in one’s present attendance
at the oce or in one’s visit to achieve a working relationship or a friendly
relationship for the rst time, this for the rst time is determined by that
betweenness that exists in the “already” (…) Thus, we nd ourselves burdened
with human existence in which what is possible “beforehand” is “already”
determined. The already established human existence that belongs to the
future is its authentic “past”; that is, its “bygones” (…) Human relationships,
which the simplest types of transportation exhibit, do not remain only to be
subjectively extended but also possesses a temporal structure in which the
past and the future are unied in the present (pp. 183-184).
Watsuji’s notion of existence, presented here in a greatly abbreviated form,
serves multiple demands for an alternative spatio-temporal model
15
. It also
relies less on a linear sequence of time and/or quantitative spatial expan-
sion, as is prevalent in European philosophy, and which has been framed as
‘mechanical’, ‘nite’ or ‘innite’, ‘moving’ or ‘still’ or even “pure forms of
intuition” (Klaus und Buhr, 1985, p. 1013).
15 See Escobar, Foucault and others.
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Watsuji’s formation of being is thus inherent in a time and a space that are
mainly built upon/constituted by dierent human connections and encoun-
ters. Here time and space in the human being are also included as subjective
time and subjective space, and not the other way around as the product of
subjective thought/elaboration.
But what does this analysis mean for the understanding of power, violence,
and how they are maintained? What does this analysis mean for the epistemic
violence that occurs in or during migration? Power is, and this was already
briey outlined in the introduction, generated, and transported through and in
interpersonal connections. According to Watsuji, however, these connections
are not external, they do not indicate connections between individuals, but
are inherent to existence; they are a part of it.
That is why migration not only decouples people from their traditional loca-
tion, but also tears them out of an intimate, familiar environment. It deprives
them of their homeland in a kind of “recurring event” (Améry, 1988, pp.
65-66; Boteva-Richter, 2020, p. 64) and creates a kind of “falling out of the
nest” (Boteva-Richter, 2013, p. 52), in which people not only leave behind
places, but above all abandon their fathers and mothers, their children, there-
by also catapulting these, as former parts of their intimate social existence,
into an equally insecure, cold, and unloved future. Close, intimate bonds
between parents, primarily between mothers and children, are warped by
spatial separation. Mothers who migrate to rich countries to earn a living for
their families break o physical relationships with their loved ones and then
try to fulll their role as parents remotely, via Skype or Zoom, i.e., digitally
(Gheaus, 2013). These people: mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, try
to establish connections in their new home at the same time that they have to
look for and nd work, obtain legal recognition of documents, and build up
a new life and a new identity parallel to the old one.
To do this, however, they need language skills, new semantics, and knowl-
edge about their new homeland, as well as information about the possibilities
of learning something yet again or of being able to obtain recognition for
what has already been learned.
Here, however, at this interface between the migrants and their new society,
which is often characterized by rejection, everyday racism, and in any case
initially by isolation in refugee camps or by human coldness, epistemic vio-
lence is already emerging. This violence can last for a while or for the whole
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of the subsequent life abroad and designates migrants as such. In migration,
therefore, this connection between subject and violence also gains new sharp-
ness in the epistemic dimension through the “ontological degradation of cer-
tain groups of people” (de Sousa Santos, 2020, p. 119) and through with-
holding of vital information, be it because of intention or of ignorance. Due
to separation from their loved ones, but also due to a lack of language skills,
lack of recognition of documents, and uncertainty in the semantics of their
new life, migrants suer a breakdown of existence that is second to none.
In order to prevent this, fragmented interpersonal connections must rst be
cemented, new sources of knowledge opened up, and new strategies devel-
oped. Both life experience and (specialist) knowledge from a migrant’s prior
life, as well as the new experience of migration can be utilized as a knowl-
edge resource. Because, to nd a new home and build a new life in concor-
dance with the old one, it is necessary to progress through the dierent stages
of the migration experience, to break through experiences of power such as
everyday racism, power mechanisms, etc. and to combat epistemic violence.
Only in this way can the migrating people represent themselves (Brunner,
2020, p. 279) by ghting for a space for their concerns, including for the
generation and the application of knowledge
16
.
In this regard the previously mentioned idea of extended existence advanced by
Watsuji helps to better understand the power structures. It reveals the connec-
tions which are closely interwoven in an individual-social manner and which
function as conduits not just for transporting solidarity, but also for power and
power strategies. Knowledge and strategic semantics can be shared and com-
municated via these connections, from colleague to colleague, from new citi-
zen to new citizen and from friend to friend (Watsuji, 1996, p. 35). Therefore,
if we dene epistemic violence not as an abstract reservoir of knowledge, but
as knowledge generation through acts in the “social relationship” and as “so-
cial (…) and (geo)political (…) positioning within power relations” (Brunner,
2020, p. 283) then a whole complex of power structures opens up within the
individual-social eld, which are particularly strong in migration.
In the following chapter, in order to outline this sharpness, the meaning of
language of the mechanisms and actors of epistemic violence, will be shown
as an example. This arises in the course of immigration and often decides the
further fate of the people.
16 See de Sousa Santos and Brunner.
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Language and Origin
a) Language as Knowledge of Home
To a certain extent, language is natural to us, but it is also a kind of knowl-
edge of oneself and of one’s origins. As Heidegger argues: “A person speaks.
We speak while awake and in dreams. We always talk; even if we don’t let
a word go (…) We keep talking in some way. We speak because speaking is
natural to us (…)” (2001, p. 11).
But do we actually succeed in this ability to speak in any human language
so easily and uently? Can we be so natural and uninhibited in dierent
languages; can we move in an absolute intimacy of knowledge; and can we
share and give ourselves and the world, love and suering? Do we speak the
language in all languages (p. 12)
17
so easily and lively as the rippling water
of a mountain stream in May? Of course not, because we can only move
well, express ourselves, and give ourselves with certainty (as we are) on an
ancestral terrain where a familiar element recurs time and again as a constant
and well-known event
18
.
According to Heidegger, language also “designs” the human being and the
sound of speaking initiates the “passions (Erleidnisse) of the soul” (1982, pp.
112, 114)
19
. As it lies in the most human of all activities, whereby the import-
ant act is in coming to an understanding, be it through sound or by speak-
ing. He highlights language as home in his “Letter on Humanism” (1946),
leading Tsutomu Ben Yagi to comment that: “If our thinking about the Being
is only possible with the help of the language, then language indicates the
location, where we will be brought to relation to [it]. So, language shows the
place where we live, our homeland (…)” (Yagi, 2014, pp. 34-35).
However, this sounds easier than it actually is, because in migration and
in the period of creating a personality, nding new aspects of identity, and
building a home again the new life must be interpreted, explained, and lived
in a sharing of emotions. If the homeland is intimately connected with lan-
guage (Gadamer, 1993, p. 367) then building a new home is inseparable
from building the home as an interpretable or inhabited world lled with a
17 This refers to Heidegger’s statement that “Language speaks (Die Sprache spricht)”.
18 Maldonado-Torres also points to the need to delimit language from a single location, i.e., from
Western Europe. See: (2004, 31f.).
19 This is based on Aristotle.
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language that one is able to understand. Situating oneself anew requires an
understanding of a new hermeneutic of everyday life, which primarily can be
transmitted through the interconnections in the new home.
Yet, before there can be a new interpretation and understanding, a break rst
happens in and through the migration. Because to seek contemplation in a
new language requires rst: “(…) a break that cannot be avoided and that has
to heal if you want to survive. […] So it is [a kind of] farewell to the language
that connects people when you can no longer hear your own language [and
can no longer read it]. That is the human background of all exiles” (p. 367).
Due to the connection to native language being disrupted, people are thus
no longer able to share their meanings or to generate a new body of knowl-
edge, because rst the new language must be learned well and its semantics
must become familiar and natural for oneself. And even knowledge of the
old homeland cannot be shared in the new place if proper new connections
cannot be established due to a lack of speaking. And at times this can also
come to the point of speechlessness. Knowledge is not there if language does
not speak.
b) Speechlessness Abroad
When moving to a new place and looking for a new homeland, migrants of-
ten suer a loss of language or communication skills due to a lack of knowle-
dge of the new homeland’s language. But what is the eect of this temporary
loss of language and expression, which is limited in time as long as the new
language has not been learned well, but which, in the state of original spee-
chlessness, penetrates deeply into the ontological realm and generates trau-
matic experiences? This condition, which usually occurs upon rst arriving
and initiates a special state of existence, is of existential importance, but it is
dicult to convey it to those who are not aected. To wit:
Whoever has not been without language and tried to articulate a break, a
loss, an escape over mountains or across the sea without being able to speak,
cannot understand this state of not being able to speak. Language is stolen
away as a strong connection to home or as a witness to a sense of belonging
and it is prevented in many cases by eeing or in migration: Language no
longer speaks. The loss of language, which transports emotional content and is
essential for breaks and for the reconstitution of intersubjective connections,
literally bears a longing on the tongue, speaking of loss, of homelessness, of
joy, and sadness. In the loss of language, the loss of one’s homeland manifests
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itself as a denitive displacement, be it temporary or forever. And if there is
ever or again to be a new beginning, it is thanks to language as “the house of
being” (Heidegger, 2001, p. 90) that we can start again and constitute a new
home and new connections. Language is our means of sharing our existence.
Through this sharing we create an old and new, a respective togetherness, in a
sharing of the self with the others (Boteva-Richter, 2015, p. 6).
This means that, to prevent epistemic violence, an urgent, quick release from
this state of not being able to speak is required. The demands of decolonial
thinkers to open up a space for speaking and for the concerns of the subaltern
(Spivak, Brunner, Maldonado-Torres, etc.) lose substance if these aected
people cannot express their concerns themselves due to a lack of langua-
ge skills. When this occurs, migrating people depend on interpreters, who
in turn, not infrequently, use epistemic violence or abuse their position of
power. In order to escape this initial helplessness, language courses are requi-
red that teach the new language quickly and eectively and that also provide
semantic orientation.
c) Language Acquisition as Assimilation or Empowerment
But it is precisely here, in such courses and in language teaching
20
, that epis-
temic violence takes place in a genuine and actively violent form. This often
occurs with the content that is often politically selected to provide a represen-
tation of the new home and the desired cultural values. The topics and values
are pre-sorted and written in a language of power that tells newly arrived
people that “you all are guests here”, “you all have to behave yourselves”,
“you all have to follow our rules, otherwise we will evict you”, etc.
21
.
Until a few years ago, in an earlier brochure, a catalog of values for lan-
guage courses for migrants in Austria was selected by the ÖIF (Austrian
Immigration Fund), the organization of the liberal, center-right ÖVP party and
made mandatory under Sebastian Kurz
22
, who later, as a right-wing populist,
20 It is quite helpful and indeed praiseworthy when government agencies, like those here in Austria,
pay for such courses for migrants. For criticism of the content, however, see the previously present-
ed text.
21 This is my own interpretation of the style of this teaching.
22 The former Chancellor Kurz had to resign in October 2021 because of corruption. For more see:
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/oesterreich-sebastian-kurz-ruecktritt-1.5478316.
Kurz is known worldwide for his harsh policies towards migrants, which are in no way less harsh
than those of right-wing populists.
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rose to the post of Chancellor
23
. It begins with: “The ability to speak, write
and read in German is necessary to become a member of Austrian society”
(p. 78). It then continues with statements like: “Education is very important
to Austrians” (p. 90), “In Austria, women and man have equal rights in the
labor market” (p. 104) and “There are very clear rules and regulations that
govern coexistence in Austria”. (p. 119) The authoritative style is much sha-
rper in German than in the English translation though.
But what is the signicance of statements such as “(…) in Austria women’s
rights are respected, in Austria people are allowed to choose their own re-
ligion, in Austria the state is the same for all women (…)” for new fellow
citizens? For the migrants, this means that they are tolerated at best and that
they have to adapt and submit if they want to stay and live in this country
24
.
But that also means that it is subtly assumed that women’s rights per se are
not respected in their home countries, that there is no freedom of religion or
the rule of law. This may be true for some migrants, especially those coming
from autocratic countries, but not for all migrants from all over the world.
Not all countries in the world are worse o than Austria or Germany in terms
of democracy, women’s rights, equality before the law, and so forth
25
.
And right here, already at the beginning of arrival in a new home and in the
beginning of a new life, there are, instead of a greeting of welcome, instead
of friendly emotional connections that could create a new home and prevent
hegemony, epistemic violence will already be employed and exercised.
Education and Narratives
a) University and School
Some of the reasons for the previously mentioned epistemic violence em-
ployed at the beginning of arrival are inherent in the school and education/
university system of the new homeland. Hegemonic knowledge is already
23 The brochure is German-English bilingual. See: ÖIF (Mein Leben in Österreich). https://www.bmeia.
gv.at/leadmin/user_upload/Zentrale/Integration/Publikationen/Wertebroschuere_Lernunterlage.pdf
24 There has been criticism of the authoritative style of the brochure and similar representations of
values for quite some time. Among other sources, see: https://erwachsenenbildung.at/aktuell/nach-
richten/9917-integrationsfonds-stellt-lernunterlage-fuer-wertekurse-vor.php
25 In the German-language book for the B1 level, which is obligatory in the state-supported courses,
on p. 66 it literally says: “our children can attend better schools in Austria”, which presented as a
statement by a migrant from Russia. This statement is to be discussed seriously, as the school sys-
tem in Austria is in many cases weaker than those found in the Eastern European countries, such as
in Bulgaria, Romania, etc. See: Hilpert, S. et al. (2018).
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being generated at universities (Fornet-Betancourt, 2004, p. 16), on the one
hand because they are part of the “public administration”, and on the other
hand because the people who teach there have been selected in such a way
such that they establish and support the dominant, hegemonic system (p.
16). It is also worth noting that the previously mentioned brochure, which
was in public use for a long time and was even mandatory
26
, was created and
reviewed with the collaboration of university professors.
It is therefore urgently necessary to train new teachers, new types of resear-
chers and to admit them into the teaching ranks. The small circle of teachers
with a migration background urgently needs to be expanded so as to enable
an emphatic approach that can only be generated through existential connec-
tion and personal experience. Foucault also supports this demand where he
writes: “The nature of the ends which are pursued in inuencing the actions
of others: protection of privilege, accumulation of prots, exercise of sta-
tus-based authority, exercise of oce or profession” (Foucault, 2021, p. 259).
These should be revealed and fought. And unfortunately, this is especially so
at universities, where professorships are characterized by a high status and au-
thority and are also responsible for the training of future teachers, and where
people with a migrant background and without the necessary networks are ra-
rely admitted. Thus, the elite keeps solidifying and multiplying from the new,
and the spiral of epistemic violence turns incessantly over and over again.
b) Certicates as the Home of Knowledge
In addition to the previously mentioned issues, the following must also be
considered: the importance the recognition of documents/certicates from
home countries is for migrants. Because, as we all know, such certicates at-
test to achievements, to the accumulation of knowledge and act as witnesses
to the skills that a person has developed during life. In Austria, the procedure
for recognition has been simplied
27
in recent years and people are nally
being supported as they share their knowledge and skills and as they use
them professionally.
26 It is not possible to give an exact time, since the brochure, which is still used despite no longer being
compulsory in language courses, was published without a year date.
27 See: Bundesministerium für Bildung (Ministry for Education and Science). https://www.bmbwf.
gv.at/Themen/schule/schulrecht/nostr.html.
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But are certicates really equivalent documents, be they recognized or not?
Are certicates from, for example, Eastern European countries of equal value
and can they be utilized just as much on the professional path? Unfortunately,
no. It is rather the case that references from the Western European and Anglo-
Saxon world bring recognition and respect and, through appointment, support
professional advancement in every conceivable way. However, the same
does not apply to certicates from Eastern Europe, where the universities
work at a very high level. For example, to be allowed to teach German cour-
ses for migrants in Austria a certicate in German studies and even teaching
experience at a university in Belarus, Ukraine, or Bulgaria is not sucient.
Colleagues who have been teaching German for many years at universities
and schools in Eastern European countries had to take German exams about
two years ago, according to a new regulation from the Ministry of Education
and the previously mentioned ÖIF, to be enabled to receive certication for
their German-language skills here in Austria. Teachers of German Studies
from Eastern Europe therefore had to acquire a C1 language certicate after
the fact, thereby starkly calling the language skills of teachers from Eastern
Europe into question
28
.
A certicate is, according to this, not in and of itself a certicate and with this
people not only lose their loved ones and also the places of their homeland
through migration, they also lose the places of their knowledge, so to speak,
due to lack of recognition of their certicates and/or their respective compe-
tences, thereby falling victim to an unambiguous epistemic violence in its
most genuine form.
c) The Cultural Memories or Libraries of Migrants
Another point that can be mentioned as a point of nuance for decoding epis-
temic violence are the books lost during eeing and migration, which, as
people’s cultural memory, occupy a special position in their respective lives.
Books and their loss are something very special, because factical life, even in
the manner of literary ction, is interpreted through the art of poetry or prose.
Art also interprets time and place of the subjects involved and it conveys in-
dividual-social transformation, interaction, aective entanglements, and his-
torical-political tableaus. Literature is a kind of crossover of our “semantical
and biographical memory” and thus can help in explaining the ambivalent
and polysemantic power of home (Eco, 2004, p. 31). Stories and poetry, as
28 These requirements were introduced by the previously mentioned ÖIF.
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Boteva-Richter, B. (2022). Migración y violencia epistémica.
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transcribed in books, can transmit and translate the intimate narratives of
home in the original language of one’s foremothers or of those who provided
care once upon a time. Literature can therefore conjure up closeness and in-
timacy with the aesthetic tools that provide the existential background for an
adequate semantic transmission, “Because the language of the work of art is
distinguished such that the individual work of art gathers in itself the symbo-
lic character that, seen hermeneutically, belongs to all beings, and brings it to
appearance” (Gadamer, 1993, p. 8).
The lyrics and prose captured in the books of their owners, in their complexi-
ty and through their gathering of things, tell their own respective stories, ex-
plain the original past, represent the present, and construct the future. Books
(literature) develop their own temporality, and among other things serve to
decode their ‘owners’ location. They also help people to catch their breath
during migration, and to rediscover themselves as human. The power of li-
terature, as semantic and biographical memory and knowledge, facilitates a
special kind of hermeneutics of the homeland, that is, a hermeneutic of the
respective ontological location
29
.
Therefore, through the loss of books and through disconnection from past,
present, and future, people suer a new kind, a new level of epistemic violen-
ce that prevents them from verifying their origins, telling their own narrative,
and nding comfort in books where they might rediscover their childhood.
Conclusion - Who Is Allowed to Speak about Migrants?
The connection between migration and power, epistemic violence, and its
dierentiated forms, as well as the people aected by this form of violen-
ce can and should be debated and written about in detail for a long time to
come. Migration and power are inextricably linked, on the one hand because
hegemonic conditions cause migratory movements, and on the other hand
because new and old hegemonic conditions are made possible and power
structures are constituted by immigration.
Thus, it is the facticity along the point of friction between the individual
and the respective society that allows or hinders the possibility of dialogue
and participation. But it is precisely at this point of friction that the power-
ful speak in everyday life and assign to the subordinate people a space that
29 Small portions of this page will soon appear in Boteva-Richter, B. (2022b).
36
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those same powerful people themselves determine: the powerful speak in the
media, at scientic conferences, and as advisors to politicians and others in
power. And the people whom those in power talk about most, but rarely with,
are often migrants. But this “talking about” is like “discourse on” migrants,
i.e., a “discourse on” migrants as if they were a problem area to be solved, a
strategy to be assigned, to which the powerless must submit. These people,
who are being crushed between borders, between institutions, between the
sides of the “contradiction we experience every day, not having the same ri-
ghts as the citizens” (Fornet-Betancourt, 2007, p. 110) of the so-called “host”
society, must listen and must also submit.
Fornet-Betancourt also criticizes this. It even appears to him that: “It is not
an exaggeration to assert that in many societies that call themselves multi-
cultural and congratulate themselves on their integration policies, the public
sphere is now a place of observation and control for migrants, where every
day they feel themselves to be under the supervision of “citizens” and their
institutions (…)” (p. 113).
But precisely “(…) in this situation it has become indispensable for philos-
ophers to reconsider the possibility of a transculturally valid way of philos-
ophizing (…)” (Wimmer, 1997, p. 41) in order to recognize and reveal the
epistemic violence that opens up along the faultline of cultures living togeth-
er for the rst time. With the help of sharp analysis, a new type of subject is
to be presented that understands the narratives and traditions in an extended
way, a subject that includes society in itself as well as nature and cosmology
and thus oers an expanded understanding of self and of others. This is a
subject who treats others justly and respectfully, no matter where they come
from, along with nature, because these others and nature too are always in-
cluded as personal aspects within the self.
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