What is Epistemic Injustice? How does it wrong its victims?

"What is Epistemic Injustice?  How does it wrong its victims?"

        The social turmoil of recent years has revealed that, despite the progress of recent decades, profound injustices persist. Social movements such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter have emerged to address the many situations of social inequity experienced by individuals affiliated with marginalised communities. These injustices generally have the effect of questioning or invalidating speakers' ability to produce or transmit knowledge in an interaction (Kidd et al). More precisely it is a concept that refers to situations in which certain individuals or groups are systematically denied access to knowledge, or are not credited with knowledge. This may be due to a variety of factors. The consequences of epistemic injustice are multiple, ranging from social and professional exclusion to political and cultural marginalisation. In each of these types of epistemic injustice, the wronging can differ depending on the specific context and the experiences of the individual involved. However, in general, wronging involves the denial or restriction of a person's epistemic agency or authority, which can have significant consequences for their ability to participate fully in social, political, and cultural life. In this essay, we will first define what epistemic injustice and how it wrongs it victims and then discuss a special case of one such injustice to highlight the specifity of different harm , such as people with rare diseases or refugees which are particularly vulnerable to epistemic injustice.In the second part of the analysis, we will analyse another form of epistemic injustice in Politics and education  showing that it causes different harm depending on the situation.

        Several contemporary works, at the crossroads of ethics and philosophy, open up new avenues of understanding inequalities and injustices from the perspective of taking into account people's words and knowledge (Fricker ; Kidd, Medina and Pohlhaus). These works have in common the conceptualisation of oppressive relationships that lead to the denial of the possibility of a third party to constitute themselves as a full epistemic subject due to discrimination and prejudice linked to age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation or sociocultural origin.The study of epistemic injustices, which has given rise to a whole field of study in political and social philosophy thanks in particular to the preliminary work of Fricker , often leads philosophers to determine the prejudicial character of epistemic injustice. According to Fricker Epistemic injustice is a concept within social epistemology that refers to situations in which individuals or groups are wronged in their capacity as knowers or knowledge-holders. This can occur in a variety of ways, but typically involves a failure to recognize or take seriously the knowledge or perspectives of certain individuals or groups. In a conceptualization that is now classic and often used as an analytical framework for epistemic injustices, Fricker distinguishes two main types of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Testimonial injustice occurs when someone's testimony is disregarded or given less credence than it deserves due to a prejudice or bias against them. For example, a woman's account of sexual harassment may be dismissed as exaggeration or lying because of a cultural stereotype that women are unreliable narrators. Hermeneutical injustice, on the other hand, occurs when a person or group is unable to make sense of their own experiences or social reality due to a lack of available concepts or vocabulary. This can lead to a sense of marginalization and alienation, as the individual or group is unable to fully participate in public discourse or articulate their perspective.Epistemic injustice can have a number of negative effects on its victims and wrong them in a different ways. It can lead to feelings of frustration, anger, and disempowerment, as individuals are denied the ability to speak for themselves or have their voices heard. It can also perpetuate existing power imbalances and reinforce social inequalities, as certain groups are systematically excluded from knowledge production and decision-making processes. Ultimately, epistemic injustice undermines the fundamental human right to be heard and to have one's knowledge and experience taken seriously.But in special cases, epistemic injustice can wrong its victims in various ways.Special cases refer to situations where certain individuals or groups face unique or exceptional circumstances that may require special attention or measures to ensure fair and equal treatment. This may include people with rare diseases, refugees, people with special medical needs or people who have suffered trauma.These two concepts are related in that special cases may be particularly vulnerable to epistemic injustice. Recently, these different types of injustice have been identified in care and social or medico-social support environments. While the same injustices are found among professionals, based on hierarchical considerations, patients and supported people are particularly the targets of these injustices (Crichton, Carel and Kidd). Where traditionally only communication problems were seen (Kidd, Carel and ), the analysis from the perspective of epistemic injustices reveals the omnipresence of both the testimonial and hermeneutic injustices. Thus, women's complaints are heard less than men's, people with psychiatric disorders have a particularly discredited voice (Dubin et al) and all patients are interrupted after an average of 23 seconds (Marvel et al). As a result, these people fail to be heard, with the consequence that their values and expectations are not taken into account in the care proposals that concern them. For example, a person with a rare disease may face difficulties in obtaining an accurate diagnosis or accessing appropriate treatment due to a lack of medical knowledge about the disease. Similarly, refugees may face language or cultural barriers that prevent them from asserting their rights or having a voice in decision-making processes.But The Effects of epistemic injustice in health can be devastating. For example, marginalised populations may be deprived of vital information on disease prevention and treatment, or be subject to the stigma that prevents them from seeking medical help. In addition, research on diseases and treatments can be biased towards more privileged populations, which can lead to poor disease management among marginalised populations. This is due to situations in which members of marginalised social groups lack the cognitive resources to interpret and put into words their own experience because their experience does not fit into dominant theories. Several other conceptualisations have deepened the understanding of these epistemic injustices.K .Doston has proposed an analysis of the mechanisms of 'silencing' women's voices as epistemic violence. Berenstain uses the term 'epistemic exploitation' to refer to the explanatory work that people experiencing epistemic injustices are forced to provide, often in vain, to people who do not experience them in order to make them aware of the negative consequences that these have on their lives .Those examples show that the harm done by these epistemic injustices varies according to the situation.It also shows the specificity of epistemic injustices in different cases and that the harm differs according to the situation.

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