MINORITY RIGHTS: A KNOWLEDGE BETWEEN POLITICAL INDIGNATION AND EPISTEMIC INDIGNATION

Abstract

This article seeks to analyze the Rights of Minorities from the indignation present in the political protests that took place in various parts of the world between 2011 and2013, in its analytical and political basis, and its relationship with critical theory and law; and to understand how political indignation approaches or distances itselffrom theindignation found in academic researchersinvestigating the rights of minority groups, here called epistemic indignation. In a broader purpose, it seeks to reflect on the influence or role that indignation, as a sociopolitical emotion, plays in the process of building knowledge about the rights ofminority groups and/or people with weakened citizenship.Forthis,weuseBoaventurade Sousa Santos’ socio-legal theoretical framework on indignation, as well as the Southern epistemologies and their theoretical and methodological differences in relation to epistemic indignation. The work develops from the perspective of the epistemic subject and is divided into three parts: in the first one, we try to identify the characteristics of the political indignation in the protests and its repercussion in the epistemic indignation; in the second, there is a brief reflection on the relation of the revolts of indignation and of the epistemic indignation with the critical theory and Law; and, in the third part, we seek an approach of epistemic indignation to a convergence of meanings of the epistemologies of the South. Among the conclusions, it is understood that when the indignation reaches the academy, it seems to be related to both the political and legal processes and practices involving minority groups, as to the apparent inability of the researcher to translate these processes into valid knowledge and with transformative potential of the reality of the investigated subjects.