In Western intellectual tradition, knowledge has long been associated with progress, agency, and freedom. The Enlightenment dictum taught us that knowledge is power and conversely a lack of knowledge is a lack of power. Not knowing is a problem. Either a problem to be solved or mitigated, but a problem nonetheless. The unknown looms large as a state to be alleviated. This unambiguous desire for knowledge has created barriers to understanding situations where ignorance was viewed neutrally, or even positively, by those inhabiting it. It also misses out on ignorance working as an instrument of emancipation, self-preservation, the constitution of personhood, and social peace. The project at hand, therefore, looks at what goes missing when the unknown is seen as little more than a void to be filled or a problem to be solved. In short, it looks at the power of ignorance. Guiding questions are:

·       What is the relationship between ignorance, power, and order?

·       What are the political, social, and conceptual histories of ignorance?

·       What techniques and practices produce ignorance?

Looking at the relationship between different regimes of ignorance, power, and order the project builds on a detailed study of the conceptual history of the term and its cognates as well as a grounded analysis of the different techniques of unknowing, unlearning, or ”agnogenesis”, i.e. active or passive destruction of available knowledge, selective amnesia and the working of strategic unknowns. The various subprojects - on race, religion, and gender - will focus on different aspects of the epistemology of ignorance and will set out to improve our understanding of ignorance as a constructive force of modern social and political processes amounting to more than simply the null state when the flow of knowledge is interrupted. In this sense, the project seeks to study ignorance as a productive force in itself, the twin and not the opposite of knowledge.