To read this content please select one of the options below:

With Swinish Phrase Soiling Their Addition: Epistemic Injustice, Academic Freedom, and the Shakespeare Authorship Question

Teaching and Learning Practices for Academic Freedom

ISBN: 978-1-80043-481-3, eISBN: 978-1-80043-480-6

Publication date: 23 November 2020

Abstract

This chapter argues that the near-universal exclusion from the academy of the Shakespeare Authorship Question (or SAQ) represents a significant but little-understood example of an internal threat to academic freedom. Using an epistemological lens, this chapter examines and critiques the invidious and marginalizing rhetoric used to suppress such research by demonstrating the extent to which it constitutes a pattern of epistemic vice: that, by calling skeptics “conspiracy theorists” and comparing them to Holocaust deniers rather than addressing the substance of their claims, orthodox Shakespeare academics risk committing acts of epistemic vice, injustice and oppression, as well as foreclosing potentially productive lines of inquiry in their discipline. To better understand this phenomenon and its implications, the chapter subjects selected statements to external criteria in the form of the Association of College and Research Libraries’ 2015 Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, which provides a set of robust normative dispositions and knowledge practices for understanding the nature of the scholarly enterprise. The analysis reveals that the proscription against the SAQ constitutes an unwarranted infringement on the academic freedom not only of those targeted by this rhetoric, but – by extension – of all Shakespeare scholars as well.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the following people for their assistance in the preparation of this chapter: Bryan Wildenthal for sharing a pre-publication copy of his book Early Shakespeare Authorship Doubts; and John Dobson, Wally Hurst, Rhiannon Jones, Deborah Power-DeMille, Eva Revitt, Roger Stritmatter, Stewart Wilcox and John Wright for reading and providing valuable comments and corrections to earlier drafts. Thanks as well to the members of the Facebook group “ShakesVere - Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, ‘Shakespeare’ by Another Name” for their suggestions. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the tireless InterLibrary Loan staff at the University of Winnipeg Library for providing me with timely access to many of the sources used in this chapter.

Citation

Dudley, M.Q. (2020), "With Swinish Phrase Soiling Their Addition: Epistemic Injustice, Academic Freedom, and the Shakespeare Authorship Question", Sengupta, E. and Blessinger, P. (Ed.) Teaching and Learning Practices for Academic Freedom (Innovations in Higher Education Teaching and Learning, Vol. 34), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 123-144. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2055-364120200000034012

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited