Fundamental Science: A narcissistic science will not make a better country

In May 2022, the Whiteness Observatory carried out a survey of 302 deans of public institutions of higher education in Brazil and the result showed that 294 of them are white. The overrepresentation in office is striking: whites, although they make up only 43% of the population, occupy virtually all of the rectory offices.

Critical studies of whiteness, in full expansion, have been demonstrating that racism as a complex system of domination not only penalizes its victims, but gives those who engender it the monopoly of political, legal and economic structures, both of the social imaginary and of the codes of behavior that govern social relations. Therefore, it offers symbolic and material privileges to whites, especially in a country as unequal as Brazil.

Racism is not hidden in areas or limited to specific moments: it permeates the whole of society and creates technologies of exclusion of the subaltern race, which is permanently and concretely inferior in all socioeconomic indicators. On its other face, it offers the dominant race a real, effective and visible superiority in the integrality of social life. Thus, racism preserves and expands the benefits and political power of groups in a position of supremacy, transferred from generation to generation.

Science is not out of this game.

In the production of knowledge, the mission of higher education institutions, there is a historical hierarchy of knowledge. Those of Eurocentric origin have a higher epistemological place (epistemology, that is to say, is the science of acquiring knowledge) and are considered the true science. On the other hand, knowledge of African, Afro-diasporic and indigenous origins is relegated to invisibility or to a position of lesser importance in proposing solutions for the community.

In a moment of emerging scientific denialism, reaching lethal levels during the Covid-19 pandemic, science has the compelling opportunity to look at itself and reflect on the knowledge that is being left behind and that could compose the range of exits for such a fractured country socially. A narcissistic science, that is, one that only seeks references in its own mirrors and never tires of falling in love with itself, is a science that makes a deliberate choice for mediocrity, as it renounces the contribution of more than half of the population, and for this is shy. It is skating on itself.

It is therefore necessary to combat single epistemologies so that science does not persist in a monochromatic, monocular and unique vision. Bringing the epistemological debate to the understanding of the role of science in Brazil means deepening the discussion and asking which science effectively contributes to building the Brazil of tomorrow.

Writer, psychologist and artist Grada Kilomba states that epistemological conceptions will define the themes or topics that deserve attention, and determine the questions worthy of being raised in order to produce true knowledge. In other words: what narratives and interpretations can be mobilized to explain a phenomenon? What methods, ways and formats can be applied to produce so-called reliable knowledge?

Themes, methods and paradigms, therefore, constitute the scenario of what legitimizes knowledge, and it is based on this triad that Eurocentric science has systematically excluded knowledge of African, Afro-diasporic and indigenous origin from the official scientific body.

Racism, in its structural dimension, builds this sovereign knowledge which, in turn, has practical and real consequences in people’s lives and in the spheres of power in which scientific institutions are based in Brazil and in the world.

Examining the unique epistemologies of whiteness as an object of scrutiny and making room for new bodies and ideas in the construction of science can be the lifeline for an increasingly discredited scientific knowledge. A plural university will be even more capable of offering effective solutions for an equally plural, multiple and abundant society.

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Thales Vieira is the founder of the Whiteness Observatory, and Carol Cenegal is a research coordinator at the same institution. At the beginning of 2023, the observatory will launch, in partnership with Alma Preta, the audiovisual project “Nenhum saber pra tarde”, which will reflect on which epistemologies will build science in Brazil in the future.

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