Towards a Stateless Standpoint Epistemology ‘intersubjectivity’, which means ‘establish[ing] certain kinds of relations with others that facilitate our knowing in the world together’. 21 Building on this perspective, the stateless standpoint epistemology takes into consideration that knowledge, while being preliminarily subjective, is ‘a socially situated process’. 22 As such, the subjective knowledge of the stateless standpoint should not be constructed as an isolated experience, but rather as a dynamic, social and collective process. At the same time, the theoretical emphasis on socially constructed groups should not blind us from recognising individual differences. Indeed, feminist critique has constantly reminded us that ‘women stand at different points in relation to each other due to various social hierarchies’. 23 Therefore, while the stateless appear to be constructed as one social category in the stateless standpoint concept, this does not imply homogenisation or erasure of such differences among the stateless with regards to legal status, ethnicity, gender, class, age or sexuality. Taking the difference in legal status as an example, how statelessness is legally constructed and experienced through various, sometimes hierarchical, legal statuses around the world indicates both a collective dilemma among the stateless but also contextual and individual nuances of these experiences. Eventually, it is task of the stateless standpoint epistemology to engage with these nuances and illuminate the intersubjectivities within and among them. 24 Founded on stateless experiences and intersubjectivities, the stateless standpoint epistemology does fundamentally speak to collective and intersecting struggles within statelessness. Yet, it may also help to uncover more fundamental challenges in our collective belongings and memberships which are naturalized through the institution of citizenship. 25 In contrast to citizenist modes of knowledge making on statelessness, the stateless standpoint epistemology does not restrict itself to exploring statelessness as a condition of exclusion from citizenship inflicted upon certain groups in the society. Rather, it informs and raises major questions about collective struggles within established structures of citizenship, the society and the world. C Epistemic Agency One of the central questions that the stateless standpoint epistemology raises is who speaks for the stateless? Answering this question does not lie in reductionist articulations ascribing to the stateless the conventional, pragmatically convenient, roles of subjects, informants, or interlocutors in statelessness research. The 21 22 23 24 25 Pohlhaus (n 12) 291–92. ibid 292. ibid 286. This can be further exemplified through hierarchies created within statelessness itself. For instance, in Syria, stateless Kurds have been discriminately divided into two sub-categories: stateless ajanib and stateless maktoumeen. The Arabic word ajanib [plural] means foreigners and maktoumeen [plural] means unregistered. These two sub-categories of statelessness were created as a result of an exceptional and discriminatory census that stripped around 20% of Syrian Kurds of nationality in 1962. See for example Human Rights Watch’s report ‘Syria: The Silenced Kurds’ (Report, Human Rights Watch 1996) 4(E) <https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/SYRIA96.pdf>. This later idea is partially influenced by the perspective calling for shifting the ‘problem’ from that of statelessness to that of citizenship as advanced by Tendayi Bloom and Lindsey N Kingston, editors of the forthcoming volume Statelessness, Governance, and the Problem of Citizenship (Manchester University Press 2021). 117