Epistemic Injustice by Miranda Fricker
In May we were delighted to be joined by Dr Alison McKenzie to introduce our discussion of Epistemic Injustice by Miranda Fricker. Dr MacKenzie is a Senior Lecturer at Queen's University Belfast (and former secondary school teacher in Scotland). She is the Programme Director for the master's programme in Special Educational Needs and Inclusion, and former Director of the Postgraduate Certificate in Teacher Education at Queen's University. Her research interest and publications are primarily concerned with social injustice, which she examines through epistemic injustice, epistemologies of deceit and ignorance, feminism, and the Capabilities Approach; she also has a keen interest in Bourdieu's sociological analysis of inequality.
Dr McKenzie suggested the following questions to open the discussion:
What are the merits of Fricker's work? And does it speak to your own experiences of either testimonial or hermeneutical injustice?
What are we to make of Fricker's claim that Joe (Enduring Love) merely experiences incidental hermeneutic injustice when the police fail to take his claims seriously that he's being stalked? (158)
Relatedly, do you find anything problematic in the claim that a person who experiences a medical condition about which little is known merely experiences 'circumstantial epistemic bad luck'? (152)
Could Fricker be accused of structural gaslighting because of her failure to engage with the work of black feminist philosophers? (This is the argument of Nora Berenstain, 2020, Hypatia, 35/4)
