Quest 2

Epistemic injustice

Harm to someone in capacity as knower

Testimonial injustice

when one assigns a credibility deficit to a speaker based on identity prejudice

Testimonial quieting

occurs when “an audience fails to

identify a speaker as a knower”

Testimonial smothering

is testimony, which gets truncated, because of an audience’s demonstrated incompetence. “coerced silence”, “self-silencing”, “capitulation”

1st circumstance of testimonial smothering

Content of testimony must be

unsafe, and so risky.

2nd circumstance of testimonial smothering

“[The] audience demonstrates testimonial incompetence with respect to the content of the testimony”

3rd circumstance of testimonial smothering

“[That] testimonial incompetence must follow from pernicious ignorance”

reliable and harmful

Pernicious ignorance is

Hermeneutical injustice

occurs when one lacks a concept to describe

some significant part of their experience

Kristie Dotson, “Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking practices of silencing”

“...speakers require audiences ‘meet’ their efforts ‘halfway’ in linguistic

exchange. Much has been made of the dependency audiences have on

speakers in the epistemology of testimony, that is, accounts of good

informants and requirements of speaker trustworthiness and

competence for testimonial knowledge...

...[but, likewise] the success of a speaker’s attempt to communicate

ultimately depends upon audiences”

Kristie Dotson, “Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking practices of silencing”

“How is that any different from raising white sons?”

Kristie Dotson, “Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking practices of silencing”

“Testimony that an audience can

easily fail to find fully intelligible,

runs the risk of leading to the

formation of false beliefs that can

cause social, political and/or

material harm”

Kristie Dotson, “Tracking epistemic violence, tracking practices of silencing”

“Pernicious ignorance should not be determined solely according to

types of ignorance possessed or even one’s culpability in possessing

that ignorance, but rather in the ways that ignorance causes of

contributes to...a harmful practice of silencing”

Rebecca Solnit, Men explain things to me

“Mr. Very Important said to me, “So? I hear you’ve written a couple of

books.” I replied, “Several, actually.”

He said, in the way you encourage your friend’s seventeen-year-old to

describe flute practice, “And what are they about?”

Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power & the Ethics of Knowing Ch. 1:

Testimonial Injustice

Fricker 1

Kate Abramson, “Turning up the Lights on Gaslighting”

Abramson

Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power & the Ethics of Knowing Ch. 7: Hermeneutical

Injustice

Fricker 2