Ethics, Epistemology and Multiple Consciousness: Some Considerations

Summary

This paper centers the ethical epistemology (EE) of the New York African Burial ground - as well as the scholar-activist traditions that informed it - in this important session discussion on ethics. I argue that both are overlooked resources for conceptualizing and operationalizing an ethics of multiple consciousness such as the one that the organizers propose. The intellectual and political work associated with the EE of the New York African Burial Ground Project is discussed along with the specific structural inequalities to which it responds. The recent application of the New York African Burial Ground’s ethical epistemology to a case involving real estate development and the desecration of an African American burial site in Washington, DC is also discussed. The historical, social and political factors involved in both the New York African Burial Ground and the local cemetery case lead to 2 important conclusions: 1) developing an ethics of multiple consciousness must involve a critical examination of both our research practices and researchers as social actors; and, 2) the social and contemporary relevance of our research is both an intellectual and moral imperative.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22527