Abstract: The concept of sankofa is associated with the proverb, “Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi,’ which translates to: "It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten”. Many sankofic interventions must happen to address the epistemicide perpetuated in our libraries, archives, museums, and other educational institutions. Epistemicide is the destruction of knowledge, and its many injustices are harmful to our capacity to know. By going back and collecting the missing narratives and knowledges from previous generations, we can begin repairing the gaps in our collections.
As information professionals, we have the capacity to suppress knowledge through mechanisms including parasitic omission and beneficent gatekeeping. This talk investigates how inequalities perpetuate epistemicide through the loss of cultural heritage and the limitation of access to accurate narratives about a community’s history which in turn interrupts the knowledge development cycle. By discussing the history of library services to the Black community in Huntsville, Alabama as a case study, this talk explains how racism and urban renewal perpetuated epistemic injustice by destroying cultural heritage and narratives from marginalized communities. Strategies and tools that can be used to un-silence library history and give people access to their past by using counter-narratives for reparative storytelling will be discussed. Sankofic interventions serve as a call to reform library and archival practices as well as higher education, including LIS education, through a commitment to critical pedagogical praxis, so as to bring suppressed narratives to the forefront and address the current and historical harms of epistemicide.
Bio: Beth Patin is an Assistant Professor at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies. Beth’s research agenda focuses on the equity informatics in two research streams: crisis informatics and epistemic justice. She is the co-founder of the Library Information Investigative Team research group and a recipient of the Meredith Teaching Award for Early Excellence. Currently, she is working on projects about epistemicide (defined as the silencing, killing, or devaluing of knowledge systems), libraries during disaster and crisis, and digital humanities and the Civil Rights Movement. In 2007, Beth was named an American Library Association Emerging Leader. In 2021, Beth received an Early Career Award from the Institute of Museums and Library Services to focus on libraries and community resilience and is working on a grant from the Alabama Humanities Alliance to capture, preserve, and amplify the untold stories of the Civil Rights Movement in Huntsville, Alabama. Currently, she is a member of the Advisory Board on the Laura Bush Foundation for America’s Libraries and serves on the New York State Regents Advisory Council on Libraries.
