Epistemic Violence and Emotional Misperception

Abstract

I expand upon Kristie Dotson's concept of “epistemic violence” by identifying another type of epistemic violence that arises in the context of nonverbal communication. “Emotional misperception,” as I call it, occurs when the following conditions are met: (1) A misreads B's nonlinguistic expression of emotion, (2) owing to reliable ignorance, (3) harming B.

Epistemic Injustice in Late-Stage Dementia: A Case for Non-Verbal Testimonial Injustice

“…Pernicious ignorance can lead not only to a violation of linguistic communicative exchange, but also non-linguistic, emotional exchange. When a non-linguistic expression of emotion is wilfully misinterpreted, the marginalised person can suffer what Glazer calls ‘emotional misperception’ (Glazer 2019 ). Glazer draws on various examples from feminist philosophy to illustrate ‘emotional misperception’; for instance, the tone of Black women is frequently misread as being angry due to racist stereotypes (West 2018 ).…”

“… 2. Glazer does briefly mention that this ‘emotional misperception’ can take the form of a ‘false negative’ where ‘B expresses an emotion, yet A perceives B’s behavior as emotionally neutral’ ( 2019 , 60). While Glazer mentions emotional expression as being wrongly interpreted as ‘emotionally neutral’ it is unclear what ‘emotionally neutral means’ (most likely, behaviour devoid of emotion) and the concept is not explored in detail.…”

Affective injustice and fundamental affective goods

“…By clarifying the nature of the normative practice surrounding the affective good of epistemic aptness, both in general and in particular domains and cases, it may be possible to develop these and other points of overlap between affective and epistemic injustice. Such research would thus build on important work that has already been done on the affective dimensions of epistemology and epistemic injustice (e.g., Jagger 1989; Campbell 1997; Shotwell 2011; Medina 2013; Tuana 2017; Glazer 2019).…”

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

“…Scholars who concentrate on ‘silencing’ typically focus on linguistic communication – how speakers’ words can be ignored, dismissed, twisted and used against them. However, Glazer (2019) examines non-linguistic communication, arguing that non-verbal gestures are no less susceptible to exploitation. Deliberate emotional silencing can negate and undermine an individual’s experience when non-linguistic cues are dismissed as less credible (Harel-Shalev and Daphna-Tekoah 2021).…”

“…Fricker also makes a content-form distinction in how injustice can occur due to the speaker’s performative style. People who occupy dominant social positions fail to recognise the emotions of people who occupy subordinate locations as a protocol of oppression (Elfenbein and Ambady, 2002; Glazer, 2019). This results in emotional disregard towards Others that suppresses and distorts the credibility of their lived experience.…”