Talking, Listening, and Learning

Jennifer Lackey (Northwestern University)

The Anna Tumarkin Lectures in Philosophy are a lecture series dedicated to presenting top women philosophers.

This is part 3 of a series of three lectures on The Right to Be Known. Epistemic Reparations and the Making of Rounder Stories

Abstract When we talk about victims of gross violations and injustices having the right to be known, traditional epistemological theories push us toward understanding this as involving either wholesale deference to their testimony, on the one hand, or autonomous, firsthand inquiry, on the other. In this lecture, it is shown that there is a third, powerful option available to us: knowing someone through the interpersonal process of talking, listening, and learning. This process can lead to coconstructed narratives that are epistemically generative for both those who are telling their stories and those who are appropriate listeners, leading to the repairing of epistemic wrongs, the creation of new narratives and new identities, and, ultimately, the development of new selves.