The Epistemic Violence of Mathematics - (Philosophy - Enlightenment - Critique) by Cara-Julie Kather (Paperback)

About the Book

'Mathematics' refers to a Western, epistemically violent mathematics: finding modes of (mathematical) resistance.

Book Synopsis

What does it mean to know something? What does it mean to prove something? And how are the two connected? Cara-Julie Kather explores mathematics as a way of thinking and being in the world. She investigates mathematics in its conceptual relation to Western understandings of 'the rational' and 'the human', and proposes possibilities of subverting Western mathematics and of forming different mathematical practices. To engage in decolonial-feminist re-writings of 'the rational' and 'the human' requires to re-write mathematical practice too. This study seeks to inspire such practices of re-writing thinking and being - in the realm of the mathematical and beyond.

Review Quotes

"This book is a stunning literary and philosophical exploration of how wild ways of knowing and being help us understand and imagine the world differently and together. Kather's work illuminates and gives words to the connections between knowledge production and oppression, whose interstices many of us have felt in our encounters with Mathematics. It is an empowering and insightful book and an excellent entry point for those interested in resistance. This book is a call to wildness in philosophy that we should all heed."-- "Stephanie Deig, Universität Luzern"

About the Author

Cara-Julie Kather is a feminist theorist and writer. She works in academic as well as literary modes and all the inbetweens and beyonds to these categories and conducted research on mathematics as a technique of thinking as part of her PhD at Leuphana Universität Lüneburg. She works on questions of sexual violence, autistic womanhood, and neurodiverse sexuality in Montreal. Her work generally centers the diversity of modes of thinking and living and the interwovenness of ontological and epistemic matters in relation to questions of violence.