Strategic ignorance is structural class power, not individual inattention.

Evidence

The growing field of the “sociology of ignorance” (McGoey 2012, 2019; Davies and McGoey 2012; Gross and McGoey 2015) offers a view of ignorance as “a productive asset” that—like volatility—can be leveraged by institutions “to command resources, deny liability in the aftermath of crises, and to assert expertise in the face of unpredictable outcomes” (McGoey 2012, 553). Hence, especially at times of profound uncertainty and confusion, references to unknown unknowns should be seen as “not accidental, but rather a political accomplishment” (553); in short, as “strategic ignorance” weaponized by legal and political institutions as tactics of political control. Modern societies’ perennial confusions and anxieties about the future are unequally distributed—not only because knowledge itself is unevenly accessed but because the capacity to mobilize ignorance is widely unequal. Strategic ignorance is thus a powerful tool of “class domination and corporate power,” as opposed to an “individual act” of ignoring (McGoey 2019, 118). — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 325

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘strategic ignorance’ as ignorance weaponized by institutions against unknown unknowns.
• XREF: Connects the unequal capacity to mobilize ignorance with Mill’s framework from prior chapters and this book’s thesis about uncertainty being a strategy-bearing instrument.