ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the argument is based on twinning of the two concepts of knowledge and ignorance, and an analysis of how audit culture operates to use or abuse ignorance in nursing. The chapter explores the politics of ignorance in nursing, our attention rests on an exploration of how the politics of ignorance plays out in the arena of building knowledge-and simultaneously how ignorance can be used and abused in the process. In exploring the research practices of nursing, it believes many directions towards which nursing knowledge development is going are fuelled by Firestein's insights about the place of ignorance in science. Since ancient times, when Socrates thought about what it was 'to know', it questioned how much more there is to know, how little you know, and how much you live in ignorance. The chapter explores how the industry of knowledge utilisation (KU), promulgated to prevent ignorance, uses ignorance as an argument for its promotion in healthcare settings.
