Video recordings from Coloniality of Data, an elective from the MSc elective for Data, Inequality, Society.

Course description

Data is not everything. It signifies neither the truth, nor even knowledge. Data is an epistemic phenomenon that represents merely one way of knowing and doing in this world – but there are many others. This course looks at the legacy of colonialism to understand why and how ‘data’ has become primary in the knowledge economy – and to contemplate alternate ways of knowing and acting in this world.

In keeping with the ethos of the course, we will draw on literary and other cultural texts centring them as modes and sites of knowledge production. Social and ethical concerns with ‘data-driven’ practices tend to focus on the ‘garbage in, garbage out’ problem – i.e., how inequality comes to be embedded in the production and application of ‘bad data’, and the imperative to produce and use data more responsibly. This course proposes that these concerns, while not irrelevant, are inadequate; for the problem of inequality does not only lie in ‘bad data’ but in the notion of data itself.

This course interrogates data as a colonial phenomenon produced by epistemic difference – i.e., by inequalities and exclusions regarding what counts as knowing and acting in this world. It locates ‘data’ within the genealogy of knowledge production to highlight its coloniality. To do so, in this course we will:

– First, engage the concept of coloniality – and understand its operation in the practices of colonialism;
– Second, draw on the concept of coloniality to understand how what we recognise as ‘knowledge’ comes to be so. Here, we will address the institution of ‘data’ within the hegemonic paradigm of knowledge;
– Finally, explore already existing alternate modes of knowing and acting in the world, and of imagining future worlds, that exceed the phenomenon of ‘data’,

In keeping with the ethos of the course, we will draw on literary and other cultural texts (film, music, etc.) centring them as modes and sites of knowledge production.

 

Go to video recordings from Coloniality of Data on Media Hopper Create

 

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