TALKING BACK: SHARON DODUA OTOO'S HERR GRÖTTRUP SETZT SICH HIN AND THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF RESISTANCE

Abstract

ABSTRACTSharon Dodua Otoo has called the artistic production of Black and of Colour writers in contemporary Germany ‘eine Praxis des Widerstands’. Here I read her Bachmann‐prizewinning story Herr Gröttrup setzt sich hin through the lens of Jamika Ajalon's conception of a fugitive archetype of resistance, which is, I argue, simultaneously a working definition of a literary work of art. I also read the story as a literary investigation of the phenomenon Miranda Fricker has called epistemic injustice (‘a wrong done to someone specifically in their capacity as a knower’). Fricker's articulation of epistemic injustice has helped spark an ‘epistemic turn’ across disciplines. I refer particularly to José Medina's development of her work in his Epistemology of Resistance (2013). Subaltern subjects, argues Medina, can gain an epistemic advantage because they have to work harder cognitively, maintaining ‘two cognitive perspectives simultaneously’. Theorists of epistemic injustice strikingly often rely for their arguments on literary fiction, which has long been alerting its readers to epistemic injustice and its painful or lethal consequences. Otoo, I argue, uses storytelling and humour to offer both the epistemically privileged Gröttrups and her epistemically privileged readers opportunities to understand and transcend their cognitive limitations.