Multivocality as Practice of Critical Inquiry for Social Justice

Abstract

Multivocality has been clearly and in detail present in social science reflection since the impact of the so-called linguistic turn and nowadays it has also presence in the qualitative inquiry current discussion. To explore how multivocality can be a practice of qualitative inquiry for social justice is the goal of this contribution. It is a global picture of epistemic violence that has subjugated knowledge and practices along with executing genocides and exterminations of otherness to build societies without social, epistemic, and cognitive justice that my goal is to unveil the horizon of modern social sciences to get a better understanding of the new ways of knowledge construction committed to the emancipation of those dominant hegemonic social practices that have made possible the existence of human misery and social, epistemic, and cognitive injustices. So, I will examine the concept of multivocality within social theory to bring it into play with the social justice, epistemic violence, and epistemicide contemporary discussions. Doing so will make its current position within qualitative inquiry practices more transparent. Putting rebellious, creative, poetic, performative, and subversive imaginations into play to discover another social order is what animates me now: building a world in which many worlds exist, building a world with multivoicedness and vari-voicedness inside; many voices without hierarchies or domination or extermination between them. In this paper I will try to delve into the background of our scientific and humanistic knowledge to understand our real political commitment to emancipation, freedom, and social and epistemic justice; however, I will only concentrate on what I assume are the consequences of applying Bakhtin’s concept of multivocality to qualitative research in its pursuit of social and epistemic justice.