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What Does It Mean to Be an American? American Ignorance and Social Imagination of Citizenship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 December 2023

Saba Fatima
Saba Fatima*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, 1 Hairpin Dr, Edwardsville, IL 62026. USA
*
Email: sabafatima@gmail.com
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Abstract

In its war on terror, the United States tortured and abused individuals in its custody over a decade. This article examines a specific sort of epistemic response by Americans to the use of torture by their government, the sort of response that enables Americans to operate with epistemic ignorance to maintain a favorable construction of their identity as Americans. I lay out the concept of American ignorance as the active production of false and/or incomplete beliefs about what it means to be an American and explore the mechanism through which this ignorance operates in society. The article argues for accountability to create better epistemic environments necessary for any meaningful shift in how Americans perceive themselves qua Americans.

Type
Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 38 , Special Issue 4: Intersectional Epistemologies: The Ethics and Politics of Epistemic Practice , Fall 2023 , pp. 760 - 778
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hypatia, a Nonprofit Corporation

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