Shadow Text

Social Justice Usage

Source: Bailey, Alison. “Tracking Privilege-Preserving Epistemic Pushback in Feminist and Critical Race Philosophy Classes,” Hypatia 32(4): 876–892, p. 877.

…shadow texts, that is, as texts that run alongside the readings in ways that offer no epistemic friction.

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Source: Bailey, Alison. “Tracking Privilege-Preserving Epistemic Pushback in Feminist and Critical Race Philosophy Classes,” Hypatia 32(4): 876–892, p. 886.

DeEndré’s claim that “It’s better to talk about intimate partner violence in general!” is a shadow text. His response shadows the readings in the same way a detective shadows a suspicious person. Good detectives follow their subjects tenaciously without being noticed. The word “shadow” calls to mind the image of something walking closely alongside another thing without engaging it. If Jennifer continues to press philosophical concepts into the service of a broader refusal to understand the dehumanizing history of the n-word, then “I mentioned but didn’t use the word ‘n—–’” is a shadow text.

New Discourses Commentary

The definition of shadow text, which arises in the intersectional epistemology (theory of knowledge) and pedagogy (theory of education) literature, is a simple concept to understand, despite the jargon about “epistemic friction.” To put it simply, the idea of a shadow text is a way Social Justice Theory insists that if one doesn’t agree with the point they are making, one must have missed it, specifically by manufacturing an alternative understanding that goes out of its way to miss the point. The manufactured alternative is called a “shadow text.” It is in some sense then either a strawman or alternative point of discussion that diverts attention away from the vulnerability the Social Justice educator is attempting to manufacture.

To understand this a little better, in short, epistemic friction is the sense of cognitive discomfort that one experiences when learning something new, or more specifically when having one’s previous ideas about something challenged. As Alison Bailey defined it, a shadow text is a “[text] that [runs] alongside the readings in ways that offer no epistemic friction,” which is to say that they are alternative ways of speaking or thinking about the concepts at hand that provide a way to avoid being challenged by them. In the second example above, Jennifer’s bringing up the use-mention distinction (to mention a word, like the n-word, is not the same thing as to use the word and thus doesn’t carry the same intention – see also, impact versus intent) is regarded as a shadow text because it diverts attention from the point that the Social Justice educator wants to dwell on (even though everyone over the age of four knows it already): the n-word is profoundly offensive to many people (thus should not even be said in the sense of saying that someone else said it, for example). The claim by Bailey here is that Jennifer is eliding engagement with that offensiveness by saying it wasn’t what she was talking about, even though it wasn’t what she was talking about.

Bailey characterizes shadow texts as what get created in the service of privilege-preserving epistemic pushback, which is another concept in the extensive pantheon of Social Justice ideas that make it impossible to disagree with Social Justice ideas (see also, active ignorance, colortalk, pernicious ignorance, racial contract, white fragility, and willful ignorance). In so doing, Bailey constructs the idea of a shadow text as an easily identified tool by which resistance to Social Justice ideas manifests in practice, causing a hostile or dangerous learning environment (and even possibly “epistemic violence”). That is, the shadow text is supposed to be easy to recognize and provide the ah-ha! moment in which privilege-preserving epistemic pushback is unmasked.

Related Terms

Active ignorance; Colortalk; Epistemic friction; Epistemic violence; Impact versus intent; Intersectionality; Mask; Pernicious ignorance; Privilege; Privilege-preserving epistemic pushback; Racial contract; Social Justice; Theory; White fragility; Willful ignorance;

Additional Examples

Source: Bailey, Alison. “Tracking Privilege-Preserving Epistemic Pushback in Feminist and Critical Race Philosophy Classes,” Hypatia 32(4): 876–892, p. 877.

My discussion begins with two examples from undergraduate feminist and critical race philosophy classrooms with strong applied intersectional content. Privilege-preserving pushback takes at least two forms. The first strongly resembles critical-thinking practices that encourage students to carefully consider the truth of a particular claim. The second is more sophisticated: it occurs when philosophical concepts are enlisted to fortify this resistance. I argue that this privilege-preserving expression of ignorance is neither a form of skepticism nor an expression of critical thinking. These expressions are doing a different kind of work. I treat them as shadow texts, that is, as texts that run alongside the readings in ways that offer no epistemic friction. I briefly offer a pedagogical exercise designed to help students track shadow texts and to raise questions about the possible harms of letting shadow texts circulate uncritically. In closing I consider the possibility that shadow texts not only help track the production of ignorance, but also the harms of epistemic violence.

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Source: Bailey, Alison. “Tracking Privilege-Preserving Epistemic Pushback in Feminist and Critical Race Philosophy Classes,” Hypatia 32(4): 876–892, p. 886.

Shadow texts can certainly be understood as reactions to course content, but I prefer to think of them as being called up by deeply affective-cognitive responses to the material. They are deployed protectively. When an idea or comment makes us feel uncomfortable, we stalk the offending claim in an effort to monitor and control its circulation.

Shadow texts do deep epistemic work. By definition, shadows are the product of obstacles. They are dark areas or shapes produced by bodies (obstacles) that come between a light source and a surface. They are disruptive in the sense that they interrupt the movement of light from its source to a surface. Recall Medina’s claim that epistemic resistance can “function as an obstacle, as weights that slow us down or preclude us from following (or having access to) certain paths or pursuing further certain questions, problems and curiosities” (Medina 2013, 48). When privilege-preserving epistemic pushback functions as an obstacle, it casts a shadow text. Shadows are by definition regions of opacity, so shadow texts are regions of epistemic opacity. The discursive detours and distractions signal epistemic closure; they tell listeners “I’m not going there. You need to convince me.” I use the term shadow text to focus students’ attention on this double meaning.

Treating privilege-preserving epistemic pushback as a shadow text may not always offer the beneficial epistemic friction that knowledge-production demands, but it doesn’t follow that shadow texts cannot be tracked in pedagogically useful ways. Shadow texts are produced by epistemic obstacles, but the obstacles are not always immovable barriers. Shadow texts provide a useful way to identify and work with privilege-preserving epistemic pushback. Learning to spot shadow texts can offer epistemic friction: they help the class focus on what shadow texts do, rather than just on what they say. We can ask ourselves, how do shadow texts redirect the conversation? Where do they take us? In this way shadow texts offer us toeholds—something to grasp that serve as useful points of departure during our conversations—even if the audience remains unmoved in the end.

Revision date: 1/31/20

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James Lindsay