CFP: Las Torres de Lucca

Philosophical interest in the concept of epistemic injustice has kept growing since the publication of Miranda Fricker´s Epistemic Injustice: Power & the Ethics of Knowing (2007), where it is characterized as a phenomenon by which individuals are wronged in their capacity as knowers. Although the relationship between practices of knowing and oppression had been examined before by many others (notably within critical race, feminist epistemologies or decolonial philosophy), the publication of Fricker’s book initiates a series of productive discussions around issues concerning authority, credibility, justice, power, trust or testimony, bringing together different philosophical traditions such as epistemology, ethics and political theory.

As it is known, one of the core issues is the distinction Fricker draws between testimonial and hermeneutical injustice. Both of them are dependent on socially shared identity concepts, many of which involve unfair prejudices. Testimonial injustice is a credibility deficit that a speaker suffers as a consequence of the hearer having a prejudice against her social identity. On the other hand, hermeneutical injustice occurs when there is a lack of collective interpretative resources required for a group to understand significant aspects of their social experience. However, some authors, such as José Medina and Rebecca Mason, have distanced themselves from this conceptual framework, especially regarding the definition of hermeneutical injustice, since it ignores the alternative interpretations that marginalized communities have developed for understanding their experiences. Others (Gaile Pohlhaus and Kristie Dotson, for instance) have pointed out new kinds of epistemic injustices, oppressions and exclusions.

At present, many lines of investigation are being opened. New critical analysis of exclusionary practices and forms of oppression such as silencing, subordination, objectification, misrecognition, insensitivity, or misrepresentation of marginalized groups are gaining importance inside philosophy, favouring fruitful dialogues between epistemology, political philosophy and ethics.

We invite contributing authors to consider issues related to the concept of epistemic injustice, in relation to both its initial versions and its critical current accounts. In this issue, we call for papers dealing with the following questions, among others:

How is epistemic injustice understood?
What are the distinctively epistemic forms of injustice? In what sense are they epistemic?
How is epistemic injustice related to non-epistemic forms of oppression and discrimination? How does feminism or race theory contribute to the understanding of epistemic injustice?
How can the concept of epistemic injustice be extended to different domains?
How do issues concerning epistemic injustice relate to other relevant epistemological matters such as testimony, virtue epistemologies or disagreement?
How is white ignorance related to epistemic injustice?
What are the alternatives to counteract epistemic injustices?
How do epistemologies of resistance challenge hegemonic knowledges?