Critical Knowledge Interventions—Relevance Beyond Foundations

This article develops the concept of Critical Knowledge Interventions (CKIs) as a framework for understanding how anti-essentialist research enacts relevance—not by aligning with external standards, but by intervening in regimes of intelligibility. CKIs consist of three interrelated components: undoing dominant knowledges, redoing alternatives, and a normative driver (epistemic, ethical, political, or emancipatory). Drawing on Discourse Theory, Governmentality Studies, and Assemblage Thinking, the article illustrates how interventions differ in form, force, and orientation. CKI provides scholars with a vocabulary for analyzing and designing critical research as situated epistemic practice, foregrounding relevance as something enacted rather than assumed.