Miranda Fricker on Epistemic Injustice

In her 2007 book, Epistemic Injustice: Power and Ethics of Knowing, philosopher Miranda Fricker develops a concept of epistemic injustice.

Fricker suggests that to be epistemically wronged means having the credibility of one’s capacity as a knower prejudicially deflated. She differentiates two ways in which such injustice can occur:

1. Testimonial injustice – when a person is wronged as a giver of knowledge because of the hearer’s prejudicial attitude towards them based on their social identity. This injustice usually unfolds in person-to-person communication and, thus, has concrete perpetrators. For example, if the information someone provides is dismissed by other/s as less important or unreliable because they are a migrant, it is a case of testimonial injustice.
2. Hermeneutical injustice – this form of epistemic injustice occurs at an earlier stage, even before one communicates information to other/s, and is much more structural in character, which means there is no concrete culprit but rather structural discrimination. This form of epistemic injustice is characterised by a lack of interpretive resources in the collective understanding – a lack that prevents someone from making sense of some of their social experiences. Crucially, this hermeneutical lacuna is conditioned by structural prejudice towards some groups of people, precluding them from contributing to the collective hermeneutical resources, privileging some interpretations of experiences, and thereby distorting or making unavailable any other interpretations. For example, in a society whose dominant narrative concerning foreigners is a celebration of multiculturalism, a migrant might struggle to understand their disorienting experience of being unable to find a job, despite being qualified, contributing to their doubt of themselves as knowers (thinking, for instance, that there is something wrong with them, their expertise, experience, and knowledge).

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