Challenging our Epistemologies: Reading as a Radical Act

I have always been a reader. I regularly hear that being a librarian must be the perfect profession because librarians get to read all day. The reality, however, usually is more like seeing thousands of books I want to read and maybe getting to read one or two.

Not working full-time for the past 16 months has had one major privilege; the opportunity to read voraciously. To say I have eclectic reading tastes in an understatement. I get my reading lists from wandering through bookstores, combing through lists like “ What Columbia University Business School professors are reading this summer”, New York Times bestseller lists, and browsing through library catalogs. A big thanks and a shout out to the Los Angeles Public Library and their fabulous collection for providing copies of the books that interest me.

These 17 non-fiction titles, along with 14 novels, are the books I’ve read during June/July 2019

Brené Brown. Braving the Wilderness

Ron Chernow. Washington a Life

Kate Fowler: Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I Have Loved

Joanne Freeman. Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to the Civil War

Mona Hanna-Attisha. What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story Of Crisis, Resistance, And Hope In An American City

Lindsey Hilsum. In Extremis: The Life of War Correspondent Marie Colvin

Janet Mock. Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More

Khalil Gibran Muhammad. The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America

Michelle Obama. Becoming

Susan Orlean. The Library Book

Anne Gardiner Perkins. Yale Needs Women: How the First Group of Girls Rewrote the Rules of an Ivy League Giant

Ben Rhodes: The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama Whitehouse

Eric Rutkow. The Longest Line on the Map: The United States, the Pan-American Highway, and the Quest to Link the Americas

Adam Rutherford. A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes

Norma Stevens & Steven Aronson: Avedon: Something Personal

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective

Tara Westover. Educated

Each title has informed my understanding of the world but more importantly has challenged my beliefs and my ways of knowing/understanding people and culture. Reading challenges my own understanding of epistemology.

I first encountered the concept of epistemology in an introductory Philosophy course during my first semester of university. Basically, epistemology is the study of the nature of knowledge and how we know. Since the rise of the Age of Reason during the 17^th century, much of the Western epistemological framework has been based on rationalism, rather than feelings/emotions, our senses, or religion. While this rationalistic epistemology strengthened the role of science and fact-based inquiry and dominated the universities, religious and cultural epistemology did not disappear. Many people continued to frame their way of looking at the world through a cultural and religious epistemological lens; sometimes also embracing parts of rational epistemology, sometimes eschewing it.

There is a battle over epistemological frameworks in today’s society. The rise of fake news and the rejection of scientific proof around issues like climate change and medicine represent a rejection of a rational epistemology in favor of any number of cultural, personal, or religious epistemologies. The epistemology we adopt frames our ways of looking at others, at culture, at politics, and at science. We may consciously or unconsciously espouse an epistemology of oppression that marginalizes others.

As I have pondered these issues through the lens of what I have been reading, I think that our epistemological frameworks can be challenged and changed through reading and critical reflection. Reading can be a radical act because it can challenge our epistemological frameworks. It can and should cause us to stop and ask, “why do I see others [insert any group, race, ability, orientation, etc. here] in this particular way?” Why do I see them as less than me? Why would I consider causing them harm? Why do I see my way of framing the world as superior/correct and theirs as inferior/wrong? Reading can help us understand the historical and cultural context for the past but also provide us the freedom to break from that context to make the world different going forward. Reading can help us surface epistemologies of oppression.

One of the values that academic libraries can bring to the intellectual discourse on campus is to purchase books that inform, challenge, and motivate; books that go beyond mere support for the curriculum to books that provide intellectual collisions. Rather than just shelving these titles in the stacks, libraries must look for ways to engage the community through reading and dialogue. Libraries must become active partners in providing the campus a place and resources for intellectual dialogue, engagement, and critical reflection.

The Brazilian educator and philosopher, Paulo Freire, felt that the purpose of reading was to allow us to “read the world”, to interrogate it for meaning in order to understand the world.

Put your understanding of epistemology on an intellectual collision course. Read some books that challenge your world view!