Hermeneutical Injustice: Distortion and Conceptual Aptness

Abstract

This article develops a new approach for theorizing about hermeneutical injustice. According to a dominant view, hermeneutical injustice results from a hermeneutical gap: one lacks the conceptual tools needed to make sense of, or to communicate, important social experiences, where this lack is a result of an injustice in the background social methods used to determine hermeneutical resources. I argue that this approach is incomplete. It fails to capture an important species of hermeneutical injustice which doesn't result from a lack of hermeneutical resources, but from the overabundance of distorting and oppressive concepts which function to crowd-out, defeat, or pre-empt the application of a more accurate hermeneutical resource. I propose a broader analysis that better respects the dynamic relationship between hermeneutical resources and the social and political contexts in which they are implemented.

One Too Many: Hermeneutical Excess as Hermeneutical Injustice

“…14This is another way in which my work here differs from Falbo 2022, as she does not consider such a phenomenon as what I describe as hermeneutical domination.…”

“…She argues that the “lacuna-centered” approach to conceptualizing hermeneutical injustice is mistaken, arguing that we must also pay attention to the way in which concepts are operationalized within a social milieu more broadly. More specifically, she points to cases of what she calls “hermeneutical clash” wherein background oppressive practices and ideologies create failures of application of existing hermeneutical resources because of their conflict with oppressive concepts (Falbo 2022). 5 For example, in the Brock Turner case, many people failed to adequately apply the concept “rapist” to Turner due to the practice “himpathy”; he was instead conceived of as a “golden boy.”…”

“…I hope that these remarks go some way in moving us toward a more nuanced and complicated view of hermeneutical injustice. One offered by Falbo is to distinguish between positive and negative types of hermeneutical injustice, wherein the negative kind pertains to the traditional gap-centered approach, and the positive kind “results from the presence of oppressive and distorting concepts that crowd out, defeat, or pre-empt the application of an available and more accurate concept” (Falbo 2022, 354). While excesses may be a subset or one type of positive hermeneutical injustice, it is important here to remember that they present themselves as describing features of reality that in fact don't exist, and that their harm is much further-reaching than merely causing failures of applications of apt terms: they also erode understanding of apt terms, thus undermining understanding of marginalized groups’ experiences, and negating social-political progress previously achieved.…”

“…7Although both Falbo and I are concerned with investigating an “overabundance of distorting and oppressive concepts” (Falbo 2022), here I cite some crucial ways in which my theorizing of hermeneutical excess and its wider ideological role differs from Falbo's work on hermeneutical clash. First, “golden boy” describes features of reality that in fact exist, rather than something that does not in fact apply to any aspect of reality.…”

Whose Hermeneutical Marginalization?

“… 3 See e.g. Barnes (2016: 171), Romdenh-Romluc (2016: 597), Hull (2017: 582), Jenkins (2017: 197), Goetze (2018: 74), Hänel (2021: 176), Luzzi (2021), Crerar and Goetze (2022: 93), Falbo (2022: 345), Beverley (2022: 431).…”