Epistemic Objectification as the Primary Harm of Testimonial Injustice

Abstract

This paper criticises Miranda Fricker's account of the primary harm of testimonial injustice as a kind of epistemic objectification, where the latter is understood on the model provided by Martha Nussbaum's influential analysis of sexual objectification and where it is taken to involve the denial of someone's epistemic agency. I examine the existing objections to Fricker's account of the primary harm, criticising some while accepting the force of others, and I argue that one of Fricker's own central examples of testimonial injustice in fact offers the basis of a particularly telling objection. While Fricker's other critics have mostly concluded that we need to look at alternative theoretical resources to offer an account of the primary harm of testimonial injustice, I aim to show that this is premature; both Fricker and her critics have underestimated the resources provided by Nussbaum's analysis of objectification when offering an account of the primary harm, and something very much in the spirit of Fricker's account survives the objections.

Socialising epistemic risk: On the risks of epistemic injustice

“…For instance, if I am a bad teacher, arguably I run the risk of widening hermeneutical gaps, cultivating epistemic vices, and so on in my students (and so I meet Risky), and the likelihood that I do so is pretty high (and so I meet Likely), but I don't thereby run EIR. 16 See Fricker (2007), McGlynn (2021), and Pohlhaus (2012 for just a handful of examples. 17 To mention just three examples-other forms of wilful hermeneutical ignorance (Pohlhaus 2012), various kinds of contributory injustice (Dotson 2012), and epistemic exploitation (Berenstain 2016).…”

Epistemic in/justice: Towards ‘Other’ ways of knowing

“…Testimonial injustice erodes the values of equality, diversity and inclusion, inflicting a hybrid harm with both ethical and epistemic element and ill-effects, the cumulative harms of being denied credibility (Alcoff, 2019), and lead to epistemic objectification as a primary harm, in the denial of someone’s epistemic agency (McGlynn, 2021). Furthermore, the harm of epistemic detachment can impact marginalised communities when the development of concepts by dominant (research) groups is not shared with participants.…”

On the Virtue of Epistemic Justice and the Vice of Epistemic Injustice

“…In these recent papers, scholars discuss and evaluate Fricker's understanding of the concept of epistemic injustice – with some trying to come up with other kinds of epistemic injustices, besides the initial two identified by Fricker (see e.g. Maitra 2010; Medina 2012; Dotson 2014; Pohlhaus 2014; Davis 2016; Peet 2017; Buckwalter 2019; Anderson 2020; McGlynn 2021; Dunne and Kotsonis 2022). Following a virtue epistemology framework, as well as Fricker's analysis of the concepts of epistemic justice and injustice, my aim in this paper is to give an account of the intellectual virtue of epistemic justice and the intellectual vice of epistemic injustice 1 .…”