Tensions in a Class Space: An Exploration of the Academic Writing Class as a Site of Cognitive (In)justices

Abstract

First-year academic writing classes are spaces of transition; they are charged with helping students transform from relative novices in
academic discourse and practices to potential participants in this discourse. This means that a dominant episteme, and representation
of this episteme, is necessarily privileged in these spaces. However, academic writing class spaces intersect with another complex aspect of the university: its increasing diversity. A global transnational reality and the internationalization agendas of North American universities means that students in these classes may bring non-dominant knowledges to these academic writing classes. In the convergence of the academic writing space with this diversity there is a tension that is related to cognitive justice, a concept which considers “conceptions of knowledge...what it means to know...what counts as knowledge and how that knowledge is produced” (Santos, Nunes & Meneses, 2007, p. xxi). In this paper, I explore cognitive justice in the academic writing class. From my perspective as an academic writing instructor, I set the academic writing course in relation to theories of cognitive (in)justices, specifically Santos’ (2007a) abyssal thinking and Fricker’s (2007, 2008) epistemic injustice, in order to understand how cognitive injustices are present in this space. Then, drawing on Santos’ (2007a) ecology of knowledges I consider the possibilities and limitations, in academic writing classes, of post-abyssal thinking and of movement toward epistemic justice. This examination reveals that there is more work to be done in understanding how theories of cognitive (in)justices can be enacted in these spaces.