This week on Grounded with Dr. Iman, I’m thinking about writer’s block, perfectionism, AI, and one of the questions that most transformed my intellectual and spiritual life: What counts as knowledge?

Starting from my experience revising my first accepted journal article, I reflect on why mistakes in other people’s work have unexpectedly become grounding for me in a moment obsessed with perfection and polished performance. From there, I move into Black feminist epistemologies and alternative modes of knowing, thinking with Patricia Hill Collins, Sylvia Wynter, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Kara Keeling, Safiya Bukhari, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs.

Together, we think about intuition, dreams, lived experience, gut feelings, whisper networks, and “what your mama said” as forms of knowledge that challenge dominant ideas about expertise, legitimacy, and truth.

Chapters

00:00 Grounding in Other People’s Mistakes & Processing Feedback

06:14 What Counts as Knowledge?

09:55 Who’s Knowledgeable?

19:50 Alternative Modes of Knowing to Rely On

29:18 Closing: I’m Graduating

References Mentioned:

Bukhari, Safiya. The War Before: The True Life Story of Becoming a Black Panther, Keeping the Faith in Prison, and Fighting for Those Left Behind. New York: Feminist Press, 2010.

Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2000.

Gumbs, Alexis Pauline. "Prophecy in the Present Tense: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee Pilgrimage, and Dreams Coming True." Meridians 12, no. 2 (2014): 142-152.

Jackson, Zakiyyah Iman. Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World. New York: New York University Press, 2020.

Keeling, Kara. The Witch’s Flight: The Cinematic, the Black Femme, and the Image of Common Sense. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007.

Wynter, Sylvia. “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument.” CR: The New Centennial Review 3, no. 3 (2003): 257–337.