Pushed to the Edge of Knowing: Microaggression and Self‐doubt

Abstract

Self‐doubt, microaggression theorists tend to agree, is a central harm of microaggression: microaggressees often do not know whether a microaggression actually took place. On the standard view, this self‐doubt is unjust because it is misplaced, for microaggressees doubt their own knowledge as a consequence of being repeatedly subject to what Miranda Fricker calls ‘testimonial injustice’. But there is a different way of accounting for this self‐doubt: that it is unjust because microaggressees actually lack knowledge that a microaggression took place. On this view, self‐doubt is unjust not because it is misplaced, but because it is rational. In this article, I explore this latter view in relation to what Julius Schönherr and I have called ‘encroachment injustice’: the injustice that occurs when prejudice prevents someone from having knowledge they would otherwise have had. I then consider some seemingly promising strategies for undermining rational self‐doubt and argue that they are subject to important limitations that reveal some of the difficulties that microaggressees face when attempting to know whether a microaggression took place.