Instances of epistemic injustice elicit resistance, anger, despair, frustration or cognate emotional responses from their victims. This sort of response to the epistemic injustices that accompanied historical systems of oppression such as colonialism, for example, is normal. However, if their victims have internalised these oppressive situations, we could get the counterintuitive response of appreciation. In this paper, I argue for the phenomenon of appreciative silencing to make sense of instances like this. This is a form of epistemic silencing that happens (...) when the accepted hegemonic intuitions of the oppressed are formed/influenced by the ideologies of the oppressors over time. Here, we have a resilient, oppressive and hegemonic epistemic system. Put together, it creates a variant of epistemic injustice and silencing that is obscure since its victims are neither resistant nor aware of the injustice they face but are appreciative. (shrink)

When an agent suffers in their capacity as a knower, they are a victim of epistemic injustice. Varieties of epistemic injustices have been theorised. A salient feature across these theories is that perpetrators and victims of epistemic injustice belong to different social groups. In this paper, I argue for a form of epistemic injustice that could occur between members of the same social group. This is a form of epistemic injustice where the knower is first a victim of historical and (...) continuing oppression. Secondly, they internalise and appreciate the systems that harm them as a knower. This is possible because the victim subscribes to perniciously formed epistemic systems. This form of epistemic injustice is a valuable explanatory tool for non-standard and obscure instances of epistemic injustice where the victim a) accepts and appreciates the injustice they experience and b) is even the seeming perpetrator of the injustice against themselves. (shrink)

Why should we decolonise knowledge? One popular rationale is that colonialism has set up a single perspective as epistemically authoritative over many equally legitimate ones, and this is a form of...

As a site of colonial conquest, sub-Saharan Africa has experienced colonialism’s historic and continuing harms. One of the aspects of this harm is epistemic. In the analytic philosophical tradition, this harm can partly be theorised in line with the literature on epistemic injustice, although it does not fit squarely. I show this by arguing for what can be understood as a colonial state’s specific manifestation of epistemic injustice. This manifestation takes into account the historical context of colonisation and the continuing (...) coloniality of sub-Saharan African countries. From this, I argue for an approach to remediating this epistemic injustice that relies on the fair-minded pursuit of knowledge. This approach, I briefly argue, gains valuable insights from African epistemological traditions and can be beneficial to other epistemic injustice instances that result specifically from historical cases of oppression. (shrink)

In typical instances of epistemic injustice, the victims and perpetrators are distinct across social groups – as marginally or dominantly situated. When epistemic injustice happens, the dominantly situated typically rely on prejudicial stereotypes to prevent the marginally situated from participating in epistemic activities. This is a manifestation/ exercise of their social power. However, with anonymity on the internet, a marginally situated person can effectively pose as a dominantly situated person and vice versa. When this happens, we cannot always tell who (...) is behind a post. Consequently, relying on differential power relations, as in typical cases of epistemic injustice, might be ineffective online. In this paper, I argue for three ways that anonymity might complicate instances of epistemic injustice online. (shrink)

The internet provides easy access to a wealth of information that can sometimes be false and harmful. This is most apparent on social media platforms. To combat this, platforms have implemented various methods of content moderation to flag or block content that is inaccurate or violates community standards. This approach has limitations – from the epistemic injustices that might occur due to content moderation practices to the concerns about the legitimacy of these for-profit platforms’ epistemic authority. In this paper, I (...) highlight some of the epistemic challenges of online content moderation with a focus on how it harms internet users and moderators. If we are to moderate content effectively and ethically, we must attend to these challenges. Hence, I map out an epistemic compass for online content moderation that looks to attend to these challenges. I argue for a pluralistic model of content moderation that categorises content online and distributes the task of content moderation between human moderators, automated moderators, and community moderators in a way that plays to the strengths of each content moderation model. My compass is beneficial for two reasons: first, it allows room for the internet to realise its potential as a democratising force for knowledge, and second, it helps minimise the epistemic downsides of relying on profit-driven companies as epistemic authorities. (shrink)