Resisting Structural Epistemic Injustice

Abstract

What form must a theory of epistemic injustice take in order to successfully illuminate the epistemic dimensions of struggles that are primarily political? How can such struggles be understood as involving collective struggles for epistemic recognition and self-determination that seek to improve practices of knowledge production and make lives more liveable? In this paper, I argue that currently dominant, Fricker-inspired approaches to theorizing epistemic wrongs and remedies make it difficult, if not impossible, to understand the epistemic dimensions of historic and ongoing political struggles. Recent work in the theory of recognition—particularly the work of critical, feminist, and decolonial theorists—can help to identify and correct the shortcomings of these approaches. I offer a critical appraisal of recent conversation concerning epistemic injustice, focusing on three characteristics of Frickerian frameworks that obscure the epistemic dimensions of political struggles. I propose that a theory of epistemic injustice can better illuminate the epistemic dimensions of such struggles by acknowledging and centering the agency of victims in abusive epistemic relations, by conceptualizing the harms and wrongs of epistemic injustice relationally, and by explaining epistemic injustice as rooted in the oppressive and dysfunctional epistemic norms undergirding actual communities and institutions.

Waging Love from Detroit to Flint

“…Contrary to the colonialist logics of state officials, the knowledge and ways of knowing of local people matter. Ongoing water struggles raise the question of to what extent residents of Detroit and Flint are managing to achieve some semblance of epistemic self-determination in the wake of rampant state interference into local affairs, and also given the limitations of representative forms of democracy as respecters of the knowledgeable participation of citizens (Doan 2018).…”

Hermeneutical Injustice, (Self-)Recognition, and Academia

“…I am extremely grateful to one of the anonymous reviewers for helping me to clarify the relation of hermeneutical injustice and misrecognition in this way. 3 Michael Doan brings forward an argument for how theories of epistemic injustice can be used in fruitful ways by recognition theorists (Doan 2018). Here, I am interested in the other side of the coin, that is, how theories of hermeneutical injustice can benefit from recognition theory.…”

“…Furthermore, as others have argued, hermeneutical injustice is a structural injustice and thus in need of structural remedies (cf. Anderson 2012; Doan 2018). Elizabeth Anderson, for example, points to the implicit nature of many biases that bring about epistemic injustices, as in Anna's case.…”

“…3Michael Doan brings forward an argument for how theories of epistemic injustice can be used in fruitful ways by recognition theorists (Doan 2018). Here, I am interested in the other side of the coin, that is, how theories of hermeneutical injustice can benefit from recognition theory.…”

“…McConkey 2004; Pohlhaus 2012, 105–6; Congdon 2017; Bratu and Lepold 2018; Giladi 2018). These inquiries focus on questions such as the normative status of the knower (Congdon 2018) or the possibility of resisting epistemic injustices (Doan 2018; Medina 2018). 1 The general motivation behind these endeavors can be put like this: philosophically investigating different forms of epistemic injustice can actually help combat these injustices in the social world (cf.…”