Introduction : Epistemic Injustice and Recognition Theory

Introduction to the special issue 


Introduction: Epistemic Injustice and Recognition Theory Paul Giladi and Nicola McMillan
First, we would like to thank the editors of Feminist Philosophy Quarterly for allowing us to guest edit a special issue of this exciting journal.The papers comprising this special issue, along with Miranda Fricker's afterword, were born of an effort by us to start a much-needed conversation between two immensely rich and relevant philosophical traditions: critical social epistemology and recognition theory.We are proud that Feminist Philosophy Quarterly is the venue for the first ever sustained collaboration of research on epistemic injustice and recognition theory.And our coedited volume, titled Epistemic Injustice and the Philosophy of Recognition, is scheduled to appear in print in 2021 with Routledge.It will be the first book on the subject.
An important development in contemporary Anglo-American feminist epistemology has been the concept of epistemic injustice, which, as articulated for example by Miranda Fricker, has emerged out of and reinvigorated a rich line of work in feminist epistemology on epistemic exclusion, silencing, subordination, and motivated ignorance, including work by Linda Alcoff, Kristie Dotson, Ishani Maitra, José Medina, and Charles Mills.Another important development in social philosophy, especially in the Continental tradition, has been the philosophy of recognition.Recognition theory has roots in the work Fichte, Hegel, Beauvoir, and Fanon.Its most influential recent articulation has been by Axel Honneth, with increasingly complex and sophisticated debates about recognition and inclusion taken forward in feminist contexts by Iris Marion Young and Nancy Fraser among others.
While there are many virtues to the literature on epistemic injustice, epistemic exclusion, and silencing, we have found that current analysis and critique of these forms of injustice can be significantly improved and enriched by bringing recognition theory into the conversation.Recognition theory on the one hand, and contemporary work in social epistemology informed by feminism and critical race theory on the other, have developed largely separately from one another.Yet, Nicola and I maintain that these fields of discussion have considerable bearing on one another.From a recognition theory perspective, the failure properly to recognise and afford somebody or a social group the epistemic respect they merit might be conceived as an act of recognition injustice.
The aim of this special issue is to open a dialogue between discussions of epistemic injustice and in recognition theory.All of our contributing authors sensitively-and on many occasions movingly-consider how far these developments can and should inform and enrich one another.
Matthew Congdon's contribution explores the idea that "knower" is an irreducibly ethical concept in an effort to defend its use as a critical concept.He begins with the claim that "knower" is an irreducibly normative and social concept, drawing from some ideas in Wilfrid Sellars.Congdon then argues that one's being a knower involves demands for various sorts of ethically laden recognition, and he develops this thought by arguing that Honneth's threefold typology of recognitionlove, respect, and esteem-finds clear expression within the context of socioepistemic practice.Congdon concludes by arguing that Fricker's proposed "analogy" between epistemic and moral perception should be modified to indicate a closer relationship than mere analogy.
Anna Cook's article focuses on epistemic injustice and recognition dynamics in relation to the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).She argues that the TRC provides a concrete example of how a politics of recognition fails to transform relationships between Native and settler Canadians because it both enacts an internalisation of colonial recognition and involves what Cook labels "settler ignorance."Cook aims to expand Mills's articulation of white ignorance to a consideration of white settler ignorance.Over and above an account of white ignorance, such an account will have to consider the underlying logics of settler colonialism.
In his contribution to the special issue, Michael Doan offers a critical appraisal of recent conversation concerning epistemic injustice, focusing on three characteristics of Frickerian frameworks that, for Doan, obscure the epistemic dimensions of political struggles.He proposes that a theory of epistemic injustice can better illuminate the epistemic dimensions of such struggles by acknowledging and centring the agency of victims in abusive epistemic relations, by conceptualising 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.
Debra L. Jackson takes up the challenge of bringing epistemic injustice and recognition theory into conversation by highlighting the failure of recognition in cases of testimonial and hermeneutical injustice experienced by victims of sexual harassment and sexual assault.She offers the #MeToo movement as a case study to demonstrate how the process of mutual recognition both makes visible and helps overcome the epistemic injustice suffered by victims of sexual harassment and sexual assault.She argues that in declaring "me too," the epistemic subject emerges in the context of a polyphonic symphony of victims claiming their status as agents who are both able to make sense of their own social experiences and able to convey their knowledge to others.
Andrea Lobb, in her paper, argues that by drawing on Honneth's recognition theory, it is possible to extend the account of epistemic injustice beyond Fricker's two central categories, to glimpse yet another register of serious "wrong done to someone specifically in their capacity as a knower."Lobb defines this harm as prediscursive epistemic injury and offers two central cases to illustrate this additional form of epistemic injustice.
In his paper, José Medina argues that because of dysfunctions in the normative order of recognition of a society, the groups and subjects negatively impacted by the deficient recognition order will have the intelligibility and/or credibility of their contributions to epistemic life compromised.He explores how certain dysfunctional patterns of recognition result in pathologies of public discourse that undermine the intelligibility and credibility of marginalised groups, principally those voices of protest.
Louise Richardson-Self's article focuses on two complaints of white vilification, which are increasingly occurring in Australia.Richardson-Self argues that, though the complainants (and white people generally) are not harmed by such racialised speech, the complainants in fact harm Australians of colour through these utterances.For Richardson-Self, these complaints can both cause and constitute at least two forms of epistemic injustice, namely wilful hermeneutical ignorance and comparative credibility excess.Further, she argues that the complainants misrecognise themselves in their own privileged racial specificity, and they misrecognise others in their own marginal racial specificity.Such misrecognition preserves the cultural imperialism of Australia's dominant social imaginary.
In her afterword, Miranda Fricker argues that bringing epistemic injustice and recognition theory into conversation has positive benefits: it helps articulate a notion of positive epistemic self-esteem that is distinctive of epistemic cooperation among people whose baseline conception of each other is that of generic epistemic peer.The development and sustaining of generic epistemic peerage amounts to the realisation of the virtues of the spirit of epistemic recognition.This ethos pervades the everyday interactions of people who look to one another for epistemic goods such as reasons, evidence, information, and social interpretations, and it defines the spirit in which our communicative practices take place-no matter how banal they may be regarding subject matter.For Fricker, the inherently cooperative ethos of mutual epistemic recognition is a creative resource for many different kinds of virtuous epistemic enterprise.
PAUL GILADI is Lecturer in Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University, an affiliate of the UCD Centre for Ethics in Public Life, and an honorary research fellow at the University of Sheffield.He has published articles in leading philosophical