CFP: MANCEPT Workshops 2025

Panel- Imagination as Resistance: The Liberatory Forces of the Mind against Epistemic Injustice

Location and date: University of Manchester, UK, 3rd – 5th September 2025.

Deadline for abstract submission: 15 May 2025

Panel proposal-

A particularly compelling case of epistemic injustice arises when there is a deficit in our shared tools of social interpretation, the collective hermeneutical resource, such that marginalized social groups are at a disadvantage in making sense of their distinctive and important experiences (Fricker, 2007). However, hermeneutical injustice persists when marginalized groups have produced their own interpretive tools to make sense of those experiences, which Goetze calls ‘hermeneutical dissent’ (2018). This, in relation to testimonial injustice, is a relatively new interest in epistemology that deserves further exploration. For instance, there are cases where the ones who are hermeneutically resourceful are, in fact, hermeneutically (and thus epistemically) harmed. They possess the conceptual repertoire to comprehend their experience and initiate successful communication, but instead become the victims of misinterpretation, appropriation, neglect, and, in the process, epistemically harmed. On the other hand, the ones who are hermeneutically deprived or can afford to be so, through their privileged racial, gendered, cultural, and class hierarchy, become the epistemic violators. Further, epistemic violators not only can be ignorant of their epistemic limitations but also ignorant of their ignorance (epistemic meta-ignorance). This can cause the oppressed to be disinterested in introducing their concepts to the worldly collective of hermeneutical resources because confinement and privacy can protect their repertoire from hermeneutic imperialism and appropriation.  

In light of these recent developments in epistemology literature, one might wonder how it can be ameliorative. As Medina proposes, it is the responsibility of all agents, both belonging to hermeneutically deprived and hermeneutically resourceful communities, but especially the deliberate or non-deliberate epistemic violators, to prevent hermeneutical death. But what are these responsibilities, and how do we initiate them? What and how revolutionaries like Sojourner Truth’s definition of women (1851), Maria Laguna’s “loving perception” (1989), Audrey Lorde’s “Poetry is not a luxury,” or Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s “The Adivasi Will Not Dance” (2015) have in common that contributed to the hermeneutical expansion and prompted epistemic friction? Most importantly, how can we, as individual epistemic agents, do the same, no matter which category we belong to? Medina (2012) and Amy Kind (2025) have recently explored this social dimension of imagination. A change in resistant belief and comprehensive epistemic friction can be achieved by resistant imagination at the personal, interpersonal, and collective levels by virtue of its inherent ability to accommodate counter-moral situations. They can act as liberatory exertion to shatter epistemic hegemony and strategic ignorance. Further, imagination can aid empathetic perspective-taking, which is critical for just democratic deliberation. Broadly construed, it can be the responsibility of the socially privileged to channel imagination into empathetic perspective-taking. Or it can be the responsibility of the socially marginalized to articulate their experiences that help the socially privileged to engage with them. I aim to explore the benefits and risks of this line of thinking.

This workshop will explore various issues connected to imagination, epistemology, and ethics. The questions may include, but are not exhaustive to:  

- Moral imagination in social cognition, epistemology, and aesthetics

- Imagination as resistance against structural injustice and systematic oppression

- Epistemic injustice, hermeneutical injustice, and testimonial injustice in racial, gender, and colonial perspectives

- Ethics of belief, belief change, motivational reasoning, social bias, prejudice, etc.

- Imagination and its relation to social belief  

- Imagination as a source of knowledge 

More details about the conference- https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/mancept/mancept-workshops/

Submission Details:

-  Please submit an abstract of 300-500 words along with 3-5 keywords and a short bio by email to [email protected]

-  Deadline for abstract submission: 15 May 2025

-  Submissions should be suitable for 20 minutes of presentation + 10 minutes of Q&A. 

-  Those who have been accepted are encouraged to apply for a bursary, the deadline for which is June 4th. 

-  Upon acceptance, speakers will be asked to share their papers amongst participants two weeks before the workshop. 

Please contact me if you have questions or concerns at [email protected]