After the Kantian Analytic/Synthetic Contrast: Social Epistemology from Hegel to Derrida and Fricker

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In this article, I lend support to Miranda Fricker’s work in social epistemology from a post-Hegelian point of view. In Epistemic Injustice: Power and The Ethics of Knowing, Fricker writes that, at times, social power, rather than the actual possession of knowledge, determines whether a speaker is believed. I will develop Miranda Fricker’s project in feminist epistemology by examining the post-Kantian linguistic sign with a view to showing how G. W. F. Hegel and Jacques Derrida transform the Kantian analytic/synthetic contrast in their semiologies. Epistemic injustice arises not only from cultural stereotypes and impoverished categories of identity but, also, from the dynamic way that language generates meaning.