Abstract

In this essay I argue that epistemic injustices can be understood and explained as social pathologies of recognition, and that this way of conceptualizing epistemic injustices can help us develop proper diagnostic and corrective treatments for them. I distinguish between two different kinds of recognition deficiency—quantitative recognition deficits and misrecognitions—and I ague that while the rectification of the former simply requires more recognition, the rectification of the latter calls for a shift in the mode of recognition, that is, a deep transformation of the recognition dynamics so that other forms of recognition can emerge. Arguing against incremental recognitional approaches that aim only at increasing social visibility/audibility, I examine communicative dysfunctions around the phenomenon of racist violence in order to show how problems of misrecognition persist and become recalcitrant even when quantitative recognition deficits disappear.

Highlights

  • In this essay I argue that epistemic injustices can be understood and explained as social pathologies of recognition, and that this way of conceptualizing epistemic injustices can help us develop proper diagnostic and corrective treatments for them

  • The failure of the incremental approach to rectify epistemic injustices grounded in misrecognition will be discussed in which I focus on the misrecognition of agents of communication: groups of people not being properly recognized as they attempt to communicate about racial violence

  • In this essay, I have joined forces with those who argue that recognition theory is essential for properly conceptualizing epistemic injustice (Congdon 2015; Giladi 2018)

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Summary

Introduction

In this essay I argue that epistemic injustices can be understood and explained as social pathologies of recognition, and that this way of conceptualizing epistemic injustices can help us develop proper diagnostic and corrective treatments for them. What is needed here to rectify the misrecognitions in question is the cultivation of two kinds of recognition: (1) nonsensationalistic recognition, which requires recognizing patterns of racial violence on every corner of our personal, social, and institutional lives, keeping the focus on the everyday, the routine, the collective and structural; and (2) nonspectatorial recognition, which interrogates the subject’s positionality and interrogates his/her involvement in the phenomenon.

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Conclusion

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