Epistemicide and digital technologies: a philosophical-interdisciplinary study

• Grant number: 23/18018-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: October 01, 2024
• End date: July 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - Epistemology
• Principal Investigator: Itala Maria Loffredo D'Ottaviano
• Grantee: Letícia Vitorino da Silva
• Host Institution: Centro de Lógica, Epistemologia e História da Ciência (CLE). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 24/21899-6 - Digital Technologies: Benefits, Functioning, and Developments, BE.EP.IC

Abstract

The marks of Portuguese colonization in Brazilian lands are carried to this day by those who suffered, and still suffer, from epistemicide. However, amid the diversity of invisibility that cultures oppressed by the murder of their epistemes face, digital technologies can act as an aid. As a means of demarcating territory, publicizing problems and more representativeness for people, technologies have helped in various areas to bring to light some cultures that were previously erased by an attempt to standardize knowledge. In this research project, we aim to study the hypothesis about the benefits that digital technologies (whether information and communication or artificial intelligence) can bring to Brazilian indigenous peoples. We will draw an overview since historical colonization, with an emphasis on the concept of epistemicide presented by Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Maria Paula Menezes (2010). Next, we will present some southern epistemologies and reinforce the importance of their philosophies, focusing on the indigenous people of Brazil and the Paiter Suruí ethnic group to, finally, expose the role of digital technologies. It will be analyzed how information and communication technologies (ICTs) and artificial intelligence (AIs) have affected - positively or negatively - society in the last decade. However, we intend to highlight the possible benefits that technologies have brought or can bring to human life, with a focus on Brazilian ethnicities. Furthermore, we seek to bring a case study of the aforementioned Paiter Suruí ethnic group, as well as the implications and changes that digital technologies are causing in their lands and culture.