ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses an unusual concept in nursing and healthcare: ignorance. Using reports by a nurse whistleblower and migrant women about widespread gynaecological abuse in a US detention facility as a case study, the chapter illustrates the contributions of the sociology of ignorance and the related field of ignorance studies to the study of epistemological issues in nursing. Ignorance studies are concerned with non-knowledge—that is, information that is not identifiable, retrievable, or intelligible, both accidentally and strategically. In other words, they help assess the ways and the things we do not know, cannot know, or refuse to know. The chapter uses this perspective to critically outline particular patterns of knowledge production and obstruction that govern care spaces and that underpin associated media and government discourses. The chapter highlights how these epistemic patterns spell paradoxical positions for nurses in social and political systems as both subjects and drivers of ignorance.
