Epistemic Agency Under Oppression
Philosophical Papers 49 (2):233-251 (2020)
Abstract
The literature on epistemic injustice has been helpful for highlighting some of the epistemic harms that have long troubled those working in area studies that concern oppressed populations. Nonetheless, a good deal of this literature is oriented toward those in a position to perpetrate injustices, rather than those who historically have been harmed by them. This orientation, I argue, is ill-suited to the work of epistemic decolonization. In this essay, I call and hold attention to the epistemic interests of those who are epistemically marginalized on account of relations of dominance and oppression. To do so, I draw on Kristie Dotson’s work, which uses a systems approach focused on epistemic agency. I develop Dotson’s insights further to argue that epistemic inclusions may be just as pernicious as epistemic exclusions Specifically, I highlight some of the ways in which epistemic agents can be included in epistemic systems in a manner that is epistemically exploitative—extracting epistemic labor coercively or in ways that are distinctly non-reciprocal. I then turn to María Lugones’ distinction between horizontal and vertical practices to discuss avenues of resisting both exclusions and inclusions that thwart the epistemic agency of marginalized knowers.Author's Profile
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Citations of this work
Valuable and pernicious collective intellectual self‐trust1.Nadja El Kassar - 2022 - Philosophical Issues 32 (1):286-303.
Group agential epistemic injustice: Epistemic disempowerment and critical defanging of group epistemic agency.José Medina - 2022 - Philosophical Issues 32 (1):320-334.
Why They Know Not What They Do: A Social Constructionist Approach to the Explanatory Problem of False Consciousness.Lee Wilson - 2021 - Journal of Social Ontology 7 (1):45-72.
The Dual Erasure of Domestic Epistemic Labour.Emilia L. Wilson - 2021 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 121 (1):111-125.
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Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking Practices of Silencing.Kristie Dotson - 2011 - Hypatia 26 (2):236-257.
Relational Knowing and Epistemic Injustice: Toward a Theory of Willful Hermeneutical Ignorance.Gaile Pohlhaus - 2012 - Hypatia 27 (4):715-735.
Typecasts, Tokens, and Spokespersons: A Case for Credibility Excess as Testimonial Injustice.Emmalon Davis - 2016 - Hypatia 31 (3):485-501.