What constitute epistemic injustice?
Yesterday, I discussed with my students Miranda Fricker's *Epistemic Injustice*, focusing on the first chapter about testimonial injustice. She describes it as a “distinctively epistemic injustice, in which someone is wronged specifically in her capacity as a knower.” In its systematic form, testimonial injustice occurs “if and only if a speaker sustains a credibility deficit owing to identity prejudice in the hearer; thus, the central case of testimonial injustice is an identity-prejudicial credibility deficit.” Two questions emerge as particularly salient: 1) Why is the book titled Epistemic Injustice if the injustice discussed is testimonial? and 2) What distinguishes testimonial injustice as epistemic, rather than merely an identity-prejudicial case involving an epistemic element? Our discussion group resolved these questions by highlighting that this work situates itself within analytic epistemology, presupposing a concept of knowledge as some form of justified true belief, or more colloquially, contrasting “objective knowledge” with “subjective knowledge.”
Epistemic injustice necessitates a concept of knowledge that is communal and measurable, so that bias against individuals' credibility in acquiring or sharing this knowledge is recognized as unjust. For instance, I know the circumstances of my birth through my mother's testimony, who has a justified true belief about the event. Contrast this with a court witness who, despite having detailed, justified true belief (or "objective knowledge") of a crime, is dismissed due to prejudices about their race or gender, which historically is not uncommon. This exemplifies an identity-prejudicial credibility deficit because their contribution to knowledge is disregarded despite possessing relevant knowledge.
To clarify the distinction between "objective knowledge" and "subjective knowledge," I present my students with a thought experiment. I claim that 2 plus 2 equals 4 and challenge them to dispute this fact, leading to discussions on the definition of numbers. These discussions sometimes evoke a strawman version of a subjectivist stance: "I have my mathematics, you have yours, and who's to decide?" I'm not convinced this scenario constitutes epistemic injustice under Fricker's analysis because it doesn't undermine an individual's capacity as a knower. Instead, it highlights a domain of subjective knowledge where, if knowledge is inherently subjective, the concept of injustice may not apply as every person harbors their unique knowledge.
This brief overview, constrained by space and time, aims to shed light on how epistemic injustice pertains to societal and cultural issues, including indigenous knowledge. If knowledge is deemed equally valid in a subjectivist sense, it’s questionable whether epistemic injustice is a fitting framework to describe the wrongs done to individuals' knowledge claims. The ensuing injustice is rather of the standard prejudicial case, not particularly about knowledge. The injustice becomes epistemic when a credibility deficit pertains to an individual’s capacity to access something akin to justified true beliefs or objective knowledge, marking it as epistemic if the oppressor denies knowledge to the oppressed for identity-prejudicial reasons.
Reference: Fricker, Miranda. *Epistemic Injustice*. Oxford University Press, 2007. (https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198237907.001.0001)
