AGNOTOLOGY

Agnotology is the study of ignorance. This expose' unleashes a new attack on traditional questions about "how we know" to ask: Why don't we know what we don't know?! Agnotology (formerly agnatology) shows that ignorance is often more than just a lack of knowledge; it can also be the deliberate manufactured outcome of political and cultural struggles. What keeps ignorance alive, or allows it to be used as a political weapon of mass destruction? Ignorance has a history and a political geography, but there are also things people don't want you to know ("Ignorance is bliss" is a common cliché). This book treats examples from the realms of economic illiteracy, history, global climate change, militarism, environmental denialism, archaeology and anarchaeology, racial ignorance, and more. Those who do not study the past are condemned to repeat it. The goal of Agnotologists is to better understand how and why various forms of knowing do not come to be, or have disappeared, or have become invisible.