As we shall see, this refocused focus on responsibility for overcoming silencing has important implications for all aspects of the problem of epistemic injustice. I will adopt Fricker's account of the hybridity of the harms of epistemic injustice and call them "ethic-epistemic." More recently, Bell Hooks8 and Patricia Hill Collins9 have repeatedly and often explicitly addressed several aspects of the problem of epistemic injustice throughout their careers.
But we will spend most of this chapter introducing the problem of epistemic injustice itself; draws heavily on Miranda Fricker's influential account of the problem.
The Turn From Traditional To Social Epistemology
Early feminist epistemologists such as Harding and Code sought to shatter what remained of the veneer of the supposedly singular, unified body of work known as "epistemology" by introducing feminist social and political concerns to the study of knowledge. Challenging mainstream epistemic paradigms, Crenshaw's work15 boldly began to lay the groundwork for what she called “black feminist epistemology” to address these gaps. And while each of these falls under the rubric of social epistemology, what we call "social epistemology" is no more unequivocal than they are—what we have are actually social epistemologies.
On the importance of “the level of epistemology,” Harding and Code et al. agreed with Collins and other black feminist epistemologists.
A Taxonomy of Epistemic Injustice
As we shall see further in the following chapters, both Lorde and Arendt move decisively beyond Fricker's account of the problem of epistemic injustice. Fricker's defense of the epistemic virtue framework she uses is perhaps most illuminating in identifying the challenges that any adequate solution to the problem of epistemic injustice must address. The nature of the relationship between the two forms of epistemic injustice When it comes to the nature of the relationship between these two forms of epistemic injustice, Fricker's account is woefully underdeveloped.
What, then, was it that led Fricker to adopt such a rigid monological view of the problem of epistemic injustice?
Miranda Fricker’s Virtue Epistemic Response
This distinction—between knowledge and understanding—lies at the heart of my critique of Fricker's overall account of the problem of epistemic injustice. It is with this concern in mind that we look at alternative approaches to the problem of epistemic injustice. Fricker's work highlights Lorde's and Arendt's shared concern with ethical-epistemic injustice by offering an insightful example of ways in which this concern can be paid out in the language of social epistemology.
In the previous chapter, we investigated the ways in which Miranda Fricker's non-doxastic reconstruction of the problem of testimonial injustice led to her problematic non-inferentialist, virtue-epistemic solution to the problem of epistemic injustice as a whole. As mentioned in the previous chapter: there are no "pre-theoretical facts of the case" to reveal here. As Fricker explains, "prejudices typically enter a hearer's credibility judgment through the social imagination in the form of a prejudiced stereotype" (4).
And as we saw above, "prejudice typically enters into an audience's credibility assessment by means of the social imagination, in form. This lack of the social imaginary level leaves a corresponding gap in one's collective hermeneutic resources. In this chapter we will mine some of Hannah Arendt's writings to identify and outline an Arendtian-inspired approach to the problem of epistemic injustice.
When we consider some of the key ways in which Arendt's account of the problem of epistemic injustice differs from Miranda Fricker's, we will see that this is the case. The Arendtian-inspired reconstruction of the problem of epistemic injustice begins with several reversals of Fricker's interpretation of the problem. This reason fits well with our approach, which, as indicated in Chapter One, begins in media res, or “in the midst of things,” and aims to provide a contextualized account of the problem of epistemic injustice.
In other words, the silencing of so-called private matters that occurs in the polis results from epistemic injustice, not public/private. And far from being the result of ethical-epistemic vice on the part. With these thoughts in mind, Rich ventured into the kingdom.
Toward An Alternative Account of Epistemic Injustice
Diagnosing The Relationship Between Testimonial and Hermeneutical Injustices – A
A New Taxonomy of Epistemic Injustice
Counter-narratives of Resistance – Making Meaning By Placing Old Truths into New
An Alternative Account of Epistemic Injustice
Through the vigorous regulation of customs and morals, victims of violence in the private sphere of the home were effectively silenced whenever they attempted to air their private grievances in the public realm. On Arendt's account, however, this all too common version of the distinction leaves things rather upside down. However, the practical failure of airing private grievances in public, or at least recording them, does not arise from the public/.
The feminist outcry over Arendt’s strict maintenance of the public/ private distinction centers on the ways in which feminist issues are often dismissed as “private matters,”. 42 Arendt’s notorious disavowal of the early feminist movement remains a sore spot for feminist theorists, myself most definitely included. This recounting of her handling of the public/ private distinction serves as an example of Arendt’s particular method of redeploying meaning.
But during what Arendt, borrowing the term from Brecht, identifies as "dark times;" this expansion of the so-called. 43 The use of the words "dark", "dark" and "dark times" to denote something negative often carries racist overtones. This account makes inarticulateness a property of the speech acts of mainstream epistemic agents, the hermeneutically privileged epistemic agents who follow.
To put the problem in Arendt's language, it is the 'highly effective talk and double talk' of the officials and their followers that aim to explain away 'unpleasant facts and justified'. Arendt's view differs significantly from Fricker's in her insistence that in 'dark times', from the point of view of the hermeneutically marginalized subject, the dissonance that arises between their speech and that of 'the [epistemic]'.
World-Building In Dark Times
Effectively Combatting Epistemic Injustice: More Poetry Than Prose?
The Interview – Distinction Drawing: Knowledge v. Understanding; Perceiving v
Although she finds such thinking useful, Lorde firmly believes that it is deployed in the service of “the chaos of knowledge” (SO, 100). You are engaged in the project of understanding to 'build paths' between different 'chaotic' forms of knowledge: 'What. On Lorde's view, when one's frame of understanding does not give adequate meaning to the knowledge she is forming, one should first question not the knowledge she is forming, but the meaning frame of the concept on the basis of which that knowledge is formed. knowledge can be assessed.
Rich: In the sense of being able to pull them out, analyze them, protect them. At this point in the interview several important things happen: first, Lorde—along with Rich—is beginning in earnest to establish a conceptual dividing line between the ethical-epistemic concepts of knowledge and understanding. At this point in the interview Rich is able to intelligently understand that certain conclusions, beliefs, perceptions, feelings, etc.
This shift from insightful interlocutor to perpetrator of epistemic injustice against Lorde is striking; but a short time later in the interview we see that Rich herself, in a particularly self-reflective and vulnerable moment, is finally able to diagnose what caused her disgust with the response to Lorde's accusation. In the coming pages we will further explore the divide that Lorde begins to draw here between knowledge and understanding. Doing this will not only help us better understand why Lorde responded so forcefully to Rich's seemingly innocent request for documentation in the way she did.
But at this point, Lorde goes on to explain how she has had to fight throughout her life to maintain her "perceptions of the way things are... in the face of tremendous opposition and cruel judgment," sometimes causing her to question her own "perceptions and beliefs." . inner knowledge” (SO, 105). It's at this point in the interview that Rich finally admits that her request for "chapter and verse" during their earlier phone conversation meant more than she was willing to admit.
The Interview – Taking Steps: On the Roles of Trust, Imagination, and Novelty in
Although “the muffled sounds coming from the next room were unmistakable,” Lorde's brain (and heart) refused to accept her current perception of the room. Lorde and Muriel's need for a new language lay in the fact that their old conceptual framework could not provide adequate meaning to their new experiences. This new meaning framework of understanding should restore her sense of self and provide a new sense of the world that better fits the new facts of her life.
Of course, not everyone's experiences in the world cause changes in their frameworks of understanding in such fundamental and devastating ways. I argue that Polhaus gives us a better account of the role identity biases play in epistemic injustices. But in the case of testimonial injustice, identity bias is neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause of it.
We can begin to see this more clearly by returning to the case of the mainstream epistemic agent whose testimony runs against the grain of mainstream epistemic experiences. If one belongs to an epistemically mainstream group, she places her epistemic group identity on the line whenever her descriptions of experiences in the world depart significantly from mainstream descriptions of the world. Case in point: when Adrienne Rich demanded ‘documentation’ from Lorde in support of the perceptions Lorde had been trying to articulate to her, she was asking Lorde to provide evidential support for her descriptions of her experiences in the world.
Lorde is wary of being pressured to try to explain, justify, or make sense of her experiences in the world before taking the time to truly perceive and begin to know them. On the very idea of a conceptual schema.” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association.
On the Role of Identity Prejudices in Epistemic Injustice
