““I learned a new word I thought you’d like,” my boss says at our most recent meeting, “Epistemicide.” It’s not that she thought I would like epistemicide itself. Rather, she thought I might like to have a word for the “the devaluing, silencing, killing, or annihilation of knowledge.” A word I could search.

This search led me to Dr. Beth Patin’s lecture “The Ethics of Epistemic Justice: Addressing Epistemicide through Social Justice in Library and Information Sciences.” After watching Patin’s lecture, I can appreciate how poetic the moment with my boss was. “Giving things language” is one form of epistemic justice, which Patin offers as the counter to epistemicide. Patin notes that this language allows us “to discuss it, understand it, study it.””