What does it mean to be an American? American Ignorance and Social Imagination of Citizenship

Hypatia 38 (4):760–78 (2023)
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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.

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Saba Fatima
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

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References found in this work

White Ignorance.Charles Wright Mills - 2007 - In Shannon Sullivan & Nancy Tuana, Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance. State Univ of New York Pr. pp. 11-38.
White Ignorance and Colonial Oppression.Shannon Sullivan - 2007 - In Shannon Sullivan & Nancy Tuana, Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance. State Univ of New York Pr. pp. 153-172.
A Lockean argument for Black reparations.Bernard Boxill - 2003 - The Journal of Ethics 7 (1):63-91.

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