Knowledge and Acknowledgement: ‘Epistemic Injustice’ as a Problem of Recognition1
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9256.2004.00220.x |
| Published date | 01 September 2004 |
| Date | 01 September 2004 |
| Author | Jane McConkey |
| Subject Matter | Article |
© Political Studies Association, 2004.
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
Knowledge and Acknowledgement:
‘Epistemic Injustice’ as a Problem of
Recognition1
Jane McConkey
Queen’s University Belfast
‘Epistemic injustice’ concerns the process of credibility conferral upon knowledge claimants. The
contention is that individuals belonging to marginalised or underprivileged groups may suffer from
a lack of credibility when they deserve to be counted as credible knowers. Although this may
appear to be a problem confined to epistemology, it also resonates with debates in justice theory
over questions of ‘recognition’. This is demonstrated by linking epistemic injustice to cultural forms
of oppression, in this case ‘cultural imperialism’.
Ludwig Wittgenstein remarked that ‘knowledge is in the end based on acknowl-
edgement’ (Wittgenstein, 1969, #378), suggesting that what we know depends on
how our claims to knowledge are received. This article aims to highlight the diffi-
culties marginalised groups encounter in being accepted as knowers through an
exploration of the problem of ‘epistemic injustice’, while also illustrating the need
to consider epistemic injustice as a problem of recognition.
What is epistemic injustice?
The concept belongs to Miranda Fricker2(Fricker, 1998 and 1999) and concerns
the conferral of credibility upon knowledge claimants. I will not employ ‘credibil-
ity’ in any technical way here and it should be sufficient to understand the ordi-
nary sense of the term as relating to the believability a person possesses. On the
account I am adopting, credibility can only be conferred by one’s epistemic com-
munity: the others around one decide the grounds on which a person counts as
believable. While we might want to claim that an individual who meets certain
given conditions should be counted as credible, in fact, the achievement of this
status lies with society. The aspects of epistemic injustice I will examine here are
failures to grant credibility.
Because credibility is something society has the power to withhold and deny there
is a possibility that some people who deserve to be counted as credible are not
counted as such. Raising the question of why this might be so reaches the heart
of our concern with epistemic injustice. The process of credibility assessment may
favour those groups who are already powerful or privileged in society. This is to
say that (at least in Western societies) if one were male, middle class, middle-aged
and white it is likely that one would be understood as a highly believable person.
POLITICS: 2004 VOL 24(3), 198–205
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