Hermeneutical injustice occurs when there is a gap in the interpretive resources available to members of a society due to the marginalization of members of a social group from sense‐making practices. In this paper, I address two questions about hermeneutical injustice that are undertheorized in the recent literature: (1) what do we mean when we say that someone lacks the interpretive resources for making sense of an experience? and (2) how do marginalized individuals develop interpretive resources? (...) In response to (1), I argue that to lack interpretive resources is to lack conceptual skill or know how. In response to (2), I draw on resources from Gilbert Ryle and Andy Clark and provide a model of how marginalized individuals develop new conceptual skills by naming their shared experience and using it as a tool for scaffolding each other's conceptual performance. At the same time, I draw on the work of Gaile Pohlhaus and Kristie Dotson to show how these practices succeed only through the redistribution of epistemic power across differently situated social groups. (shrink)

While in agreement with Miranda Fricker’s context-sensitive approach to hermeneutical injustice, this paper argues that this contextualist approach has to be pluralized and rendered relational in more complex ways. In the first place, I argue that the normative assessment of social silences and the epistemic harms they generate cannot be properly carried out without a pluralistic analysis of the different interpretative communities and expressive practices that coexist in the social context in question. Social silences and hermeneutical gaps (...) are misrepresented if they are uniformly predicated of an entire social context, instead of being predicated of particular ways of inhabiting that context by particular people in relation to particular others. I contend that a more nuanced—polyphonic—contextualization offers a more adequate picture of what it means to break social silences and to repair the hermeneutical injustices associated with them. In the second place, I argue that the particular obligations with respect to hermeneutical justice that differently situated subjects and groups have are interactive and need to be determined relationally. That is, whether individuals and groups live up to their hermeneutical responsibilities has to be assessed by taking into account the forms of mutual positionality, relationality, and responsivity (or lack thereof) that these subjects and groups display with respect to one another. The central argument is developed through an examination of what in race theory and in contemporary epistemologies of ignorance has been termed “white ignorance”; that is, the kind of hermeneutical inability of privileged white subjects to recognize and make sense of their racial identities, experiences, and social positionality. (shrink)

We observed that despite international declarations on child-rights, outsourced domestic girl-child labour still persists. Raising the question whether outsourced domestic girl-child labour constitutes hermeneutical injustice, we respond affirmatively. Relying on two indigenous victimology-narratives that are newspaper reports, we expose some of the horrors that the victims of outsourced domestic girl-child labour suffer. Comparing these reports with other victimology-narratives of hermeneutical injustice as reported by Miranda Fricker and Hilkje Hänel, we argue that the victims of outsourced domestic (...) girl-child labour suffer a hermeneutical gap and hermeneutical interference; and that the perpetuators of this practice, help to foster what we call ‘hermeneutical obstruction’. We recommend different counteracting measures such as: a radical feminization of educational curricula, which will allow for the introduction of the relevant hermeneutical resources that female children need in making sense of their experiences, into the classrooms and other places of learning; establishing feminist liberation agencies in all schools, religious institutions and hospitals, as ways of increasing the level of awareness about the rights of the girl-child in children and adults; feminizing legislation and legislative processes, to allow for the enactment of laws to protect the rights of the girl-child; and campaigning for a more rigorous enforcement of child-rights laws. (shrink)

In this paper I draw attention to a shortcoming in Miranda Fricker's 2007 account of hermeneutical injustice: that the only hermeneutical resource she acknowledges is a shared conceptual framework. Consequently, Fricker creates the impression that hermeneutical injustice manifests itself almost exclusively in the form of a conceptual lacuna. Considering the negative hermeneutical impact of certain societal taboos, however, suggests that there can be cases of hermeneutical injustice even when an agent's conceptual repertoire (...) is perfectly adequate. I argue that this observation highlights the need to expand Fricker's account to accommodate a wider range of hermeneutical resources and, in turn, a broader taxonomy of hermeneutical injustice. Specifically, my central case of a societal taboo presses the need to recognize as a valuable hermeneutical resource an expressively free environment, in which individuals can put their conceptual-interpretative resources to good hermeneutical effect. (shrink)

This paper defends a novel view of hermeneutical epistemic injustice. To this effect, it starts by arguing that Miranda Fricker’s account is too restrictive: hermeneutical epistemic injustice is more ubiquitous than her account allows. That is because, contra Fricker, conceptual ignorance is not necessary for HEI: hermeneutical epistemic injustice essentially involves a failure in concept application rather than in concept possession. Further on, I unpack hermeneutical epistemic injustice as unjustly brought about basing (...) failure. Last, I show that, if this view right, HEI is a form of distributive injustice, and affords the corresponding traditional normative theorising. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker’s account of hermeneutical injustice and remedies for this injustice are widely debated. This article adds to the existing debate by arguing that theories of recog- nition can fruitfully contribute to Fricker’s account of hermeneutical injustice and can provide a framework for structural remedy. By pairing Fricker’s theory of hermeneutical injustice with theories of recognition, I bring forward a modest claim and a more radical claim. The first concerns a shift in our (...) vocabulary; recognition theory can give a name to the seriousness of the long-term effects of hermeneutical injustice. The second claim is more radical: thinking of hermeneutical injustice as preventing what I call “self-recogni- tion” provides a structural remedy to the phenomenon of hermeneutical injustice. Because hermeneutical injustice is first and foremost a structural injustice, I contend that every virtue theory of hermeneutical justice should be complemented by structural remedies in terms of recognition. Finally, what I argue sheds light on the seriousness of cases of exclusion of and discrimination against women in academia and helps to draw our attention to new ways to combat such problems. (shrink)

In this paper, we look at what Miranda Fricker (2007) calls “hermeneutical injustice” as it arises in the medical context. By drawing on the history of hysteria, I argue that the concept of hysteria has been held in place by power structures affected by negative prejudice against women. In this sense, the concept of hysteria fits the central conditions of the concept of hermeneutical injustice as characterized by Fricker. Yet, reflection on the case of hysteria also (...) signals the need for widening the understanding of hermeneutical injustice. I thus propose to ameliorate the concept of hermeneutical injustice and show how, once thus ameliorated, it can be used as a powerful tool to advocate for the amelioration of the concept of woman. I then return to the concept of hysteria and argue that it is still in use in everyday contexts, where it embodies identity prejudice against women and constitutes a particularly pernicious form of put-down that perpetrates various forms of epistemic injustice. I conclude that also in that kind of context the concept of hysteria should be abandoned. Like with other loaded concepts, the only admissible uses of that concept would then be in contexts of reclaiming or re-appropriation. (shrink)

Hermeneutical injustices, according to Miranda Fricker, are injustices that occur “when a gap in collective interpretive resources puts someone at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to making sense of their social experiences” (Fricker 2007, 1). For Fricker, the relevant injustice in these cases is the very lack of knowledge and understanding experienced by the subject. In this way, hermeneutical injustices are instances of epistemic injustices, the kind of injustice that “wrongs someone in their capacity as (...) a subject of knowledge” (Fricker 2007, 5). In this paper, however, I identify different means by which our hermeneutic activities lead to social injustices, of both a practical and epistemic kind, and I identify different ways in which those injustices manifest themselves. Since Fricker’s use of the notion of “hermeneutical injustices” to denote a well-defined kind of injustice is rightfully well-established, I here refer to the more general kinds of injustices I have in mind as “hermeneutic injustices” instead. (shrink)

Previously proposed strategies for tackling hermeneutical injustices take for granted the interests people have in certain things about them being intelligible to them and/or to others, and seek to enable them to satisfy these interests. Strategies of this sort I call interests-as-given strategies. I propose that some hermeneutical injustices can instead be tackled by doing away with certain of these interests, and so with the possibility of their unfair non-satisfaction. Strategies of this sort I call interests-in-question strategies. As (...) a case study in when such an interests-in-question strategy ought to be pursued, I look at how to tackle hermeneutical injustices arising in the context of gender-affirming healthcare as provided to adults by the National Health Service in the UK. I argue that considerations of trust, privacy, and respect all support pursuing such a strategy. One way to do so, I suggest, would be by replacing the existing gatekeeping model with an informed consent model for the provision of gender-affirming healthcare. Considerations of hermeneutical justice can hence be added to the already-impressive case for undertaking this shift. (shrink)

Literature on epistemic injustice has grown tremendously as an increasingly rich and diverse body of work in recent years. From the point of view of intercultural and anticolonial discussions, contemporary contributions have also helped to illuminate how epistemic injustice and other forms of cultural domination might be related to essential processes within the structures of colonial and racial supremacy. -/- This proposal aims to contribute to such relevant and illuminating discussions by focusing on the role that language and (...) culture might have in phenomena of epistemic injustice, particularly, hermeneutical injustice. Despite the central role played by semantics in epistemic injustice studies, the question about whether certain languages could also themselves be the recipients of epistemic injustice has been rather undertheorized. Simultaneously, recent movements to advocate for minority language rights, such as the Linguistic Human Rights Movement (LHR), raise important questions in this connection. -/- In the present paper, I argue that attending to the intercultural context reveals a new sort of hermeneutical injustice, one that, surprisingly, has never been articulated before. In particular, I am referring to a kind of HI that is essentially “linguistic” and “culture-specific”. I will be presenting two different subtypes for this kind of hermeneutical injustice: The first concerns the possibility of considering certain languages themselves as genuine objects of hermeneutical injustice, while the second has to do with certain specific culturally-established expressions or forms of talking. (shrink)

Hermeneutical injustice is being unjustly prevented from making sense of one’s experiences, identity, or circumstances and/or communicating about them. The literature focusses almost exclusively on whether people have access to adequate conceptual resources. In this paper, we discuss a different kind of hermeneutical struggle caused by stigma. We argue that in some cases of hermeneutic injustice people have access to hermeneutical resources apt to understand their identity but reject employing these due to the stigma attached (...) to the identity. We begin with a reinterpretation of one of the cases discussed in the literature, Edmund White’s novel A Boy’s Own Story. We argue that in this case hermeneutic resources are available but are rejected due to the stigma attached to homosexuality. We then present two analogous kinds of cases: alcohol addiction and being the victim of intimate partner violence. Here, too, hermeneutic injustice occurs because of stigma attached to an identity rather than unavailability of resources. We close by suggesting that these cases may, additionally, involve the wrong of Tightlacing: by meddling with their self-conception, stigma can manipulate individuals into a view of themselves that licenses inappropriate demands on them and makes them complicit in an erasure of their identities. (shrink)

The significance of critical phenomenology for psychiatric praxis has yet to be expounded. In this paper, I argue that the adoption of a critical phenomenological stance can remedy localised instances of hermeneutical injustice, which may arise in the encounter between clinicians and patients with psychosis. In this context, what is communicated is often deemed to lack meaning or to be difficult to understand. While a degree of un-shareability is inherent to subjective life, I argue that issues of unintelligibility (...) can be addressed by shifting from individualistic conceptions of understanding to an interactionist view. This takes into account the contextual, historical and relational background within which meaning is co-constituted. I conclude by providing a corrective for hermeneutical injustice, which entails a specific attentiveness towards the person’s subjectivity, a careful sensitivity to contingent meaning-generating structures, and a degree of hermeneutical flexibility as an attitude of openness towards alternative horizons of possibility. (shrink)

There is a long tradition of employing a phenomenological approach to gain greater insight into the unique experience of psychiatric illness. Researchers in this field have shed light upon a distur...

In this paper, I argue that a special kind of hermeneutical injustice occurs when someone is not permitted to interpret their experiences in a meaning-making way. I suggest that this occurs in certain cases where the possibility that the patient has a genuine religious experience is excluded by a medical diagnosis. In such cases, it is not that an experience is incomprehensible because of the absence of a valid interpretation. Instead, one perspective is not only dominant but exclusive, (...) so the ensuing power imbalance is absolute. I begin by introducing the notion of hermeneutical injustice and subsequent refinements that have been instrumental in applying it to psychiatry. Then I show how even though voice-hearers are liable to be victims of such injustices, the literature has neglected the specific harm done to someone whose interpretation of their own experience is obliterated because of the dominance of exclusive medical views. To illustrate this, I point to a case that evinces the harms perpetrated toward patients diagnosed with psychotic symptoms with religious content and argue that depriving persons of meaning-making interpretations of their own experiences constitutes a profound and willful form of hermeneutical injustice. I then gesture toward studies on the religious reframing of anomalous experiences through contact with a normalizing framework. Finally, I pry from a successful case a general directive toward the virtue of hermeneutical justice through the attitudes of respect to first-person authority and the hermeneutical flexibility it embodies. (shrink)

In addition to opening a fertile field for inquiry in analytical social epistemology, Miranda Fricker’s work has provided powerful conceptual tools that merge descriptive capacity and political potency. For this reason, over the last fifteen years, the conceptual repertoire introduced by the author has been well received in both academic and political arenas. At times, the concepts of both testimonial and hermeneutical injustice acquire excessive dimensions in the literature, and this undermines, on the one hand, their analytical precision (...) and, on the other, their usefulness. In this paper I argue against Fricker’s structural parallelism thesis and defend an independent treatment of each of these concepts. On this basis, to counteract the hyperinflation of the concept of hermeneutic injustice, I proceed with an exercise of conceptual precision. To this end, I identify the conditions that make hermeneutic injustice both unjust and hermeneutic. Finally, I present theoretical and practical reasons to encourage the rigorous use of these concepts. (shrink)

Grammatical gender languages mark gender on every noun and agreement target such as adjectives and pronouns. While the norm for personal nouns provides that the term’s grammatical gender corresponds to its referent’s gender, in certain circumstances, a discrepancy arises between the term and its referent’s gender. Taking Italian as a case study, I identify four such circumstances: reference to non-binary people, women and non-binary professionals in traditionally male-dominated fields, generic or unknown individuals and mixed-gender groups. Among these, I distinguish between (...) usage discrepancies, which depend on how speakers (mis)use language, and structural discrepancies, which depend on structural features of the language. The latter is the case for reference to non-binary people as Italian lacks a grammatical gender corresponding to non-binary gender identities. I focus on this case and argue that it conveys a problematic representation of gender, giving rise to a specific instance of hermeneutical injustice: structural discrepancies depend on a gap in collective interpretative resources (namely, the lack of an appropriate grammatical gender) and put non-binary people at an unfair disadvantage in making sense of their social experiences. As I show, the effects of structural discrepancies possess all the hallmarks of hermeneutical injustice. (shrink)

This article analyses how child victims of abuse may be subjected to hermeneutical injustice. I start by explaining how child victims are hermeneutically marginalised by adults’ social and epistemic authority, and the stigma around child abuse. In understanding their abuse, I highlight two epistemic obstacles child victims may face: (i) lack of access to concepts of child abuse, thereby causing victims not to know what abuse is; and (ii) myths of child abuse causing misunderstandings of abuse. When these (...) epistemic obstacles cause the child victims to fail to see themselves as being abused and/or to get adults to recognise that they are being abused, I argue that this constitutes hermeneutical injustice. While some may justify obstructing epistemic access to concepts of abuse on the grounds of parental rights and protection of children’s innocence, I reply that both grounds are unjust in light of children’s basic rights and the fact that children can easily be taught such concepts in a child-appropriate manner. The case of child abuse prompts important reflections on existing epistemic injustice literature, particularly on the ways in which hermeneutical injustice materialises, the epistemic responsibilities of institutional bodies and individuals, and the interrelationship between testimonial and hermeneutical injustice. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker identifies a form of injustice she calls “hermeneutical injustice”. She argues that each culture has a stock of shared meanings that its members can use to describe their experience. Cultures are made up of different social groups, with uneven relations of power between them. In some cases, a culture’s shared meanings will reflect the experiences of more powerful groups, and be a poor fit for the experiences of less powerful members, who are subsequently disadvantaged. This (...) is what Fricker calls “hermeneutical injustice”. Here, I argue that her account faces a serious difficulty: it relies on two intuitions about the source of hermeneutical injustice that are in tension with one another, and which cannot be made consistent within her framework. Consequently, her account is both too restrictive and too permissive. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker identifies a wrong she calls ‘hermeneutical injustice’. A culture’s hermeneutical resources are the shared meanings its members use to understand their experience, and communicate this understanding to others. Cultures tend to be composed of different social groups that are organised hierarchically. As a consequence of these uneven power relations, the culture’s shared meanings often reflect the lives of its more powerful members, and fail to properly capture the experiences of the less powerful. This may result (...) in members of less powerful groups being harmed. Such disadvantage constitutes, for Fricker, hermeneutical injustice. In this paper, I discuss a problem for Fricker, which arises when we consider what is required to remedy a hermeneutical wrong. Fricker characterizes hermeneutical injustice as involving a lack of concepts, on the part of the disadvantaged group, to capture some important aspect of their experience. But what has not been properly appreciated in the literature to date, is that it is really competing views of the world that are at stake. Moreover, Fricker’s account seemingly implies that the disadvantaged group’s understanding of the world should be treated as authoritative, and taken up by the wider culture. The worry is that in some cases, the disadvantaged group’s view of the world is not one that we think should be accepted. Having presented this problem, I will then show that it bears some similarities to another debate: the dispute over feminist critiques of alien cultural practices. I will then argue that lessons drawn from the latter can help overcome the problem of authority in Fricker’s case. (shrink)

In Epistemic injustice, Miranda Fricker employs the critical concept of hermeneutical injustice. Such injustice entails unequal participation in the epistemic practices of a community that often results in an inability of dominated subjects to understand their own experiences and have them understood by their community. I argue that hermeneutical injustice can be an aspect of institutions as well communites?to the extent that they too engage in epistemic practices that seek to understand the problems and (...) experiences of their constituents. My primary example is the case of development theory and international development agencies where human beings were objectified in undesirable ways by the prevailing neoliberal economic theories that guided development practice. Here economic theory and the power to achieve its vision of unconstrained economic growth were combined in various organizations. Consequently such organizations systematically misunderstood the problems of the very people they were supposed to help. I argue that if hermeneutical injustice can be the result of the intersection of science and organizations, we need to create more participatory ways of gleaning information about social ills to alleviate institutionally mediated hermeneutical injustice. (shrink)

This article posits and explores the concept of comedic hermeneutical injustice: a type of hermeneutical injustice that disadvantages members of marginalized groups in the arena of humor-sharing. First I explain the concept of comedic hermeneutical injustice: that agents who are hermeneutically marginalized are less able to successfully participate in the sharing of humor. Then I suggest that, to prove the existence of such an injustice, two things need to be shown: first, that hermeneutically (...) marginalized groups do suffer some disadvantage in how well their attempts at humor are received, and, second, that this disadvantage amounts to a significant harm.In proving the existence of a comedic disadvantage, this article notes that all jokes require some epistemic content to be shared between joke-teller and joke-hearer. Thus, since being hermeneutically marginalized obstructs one from sharing knowledge with proximate speakers, hermeneutical inequalities can lead to inequalities in the sharing of humor. To show that this constitutes a significant disadvantage, the article observes the various ways that sharing humor successfully can serve agents’ social interests. It concludes by noting some idiosyncrasies of comedic hermeneutical injustice, relative to other forms of epistemic injustice, and situating it within the wider framework of humor's general social-ethical influence. (shrink)

I argue that patients who suffer genital surgery to ‘disambiguate’ their sexual anatomy, a practice labelled ‘intersex genital mutilation’ (IGM) by intersex advocates, can be understood as victims of hermeneutical injustice in the sense elaborated by Miranda Fricker. This claim is clarified and defended from two objections. I further argue that a particular subset of cases of IGM-based hermeneutical injustice instantiate a novel form of hermeneutical injustice, which I call deception-based hermeneutical injustice. (...) I highlight how this differs from central types of hermeneutical injustice in the literature and trace its harms. (shrink)

In this paper, we have two goals. First, we argue for a blueprint for hermeneutical injustice that allows us to schematize existing and discover new varieties of hermeneutical injustices. The underlying insight is that Fricker provides both a general concept of hermeneutical injustice and a specific conception thereof. By distinguishing between the general concept and its specific conceptions, we gain a fruitful tool to detect such injustices in our everyday lives. Second, we use this blueprint (...) to provide a further example of hermeneutical injustice that draws our attention to yet another distinction: Some hermeneutical injustices result from a lack or distortion in the collective conceptual resource and some are due to problems in the application of existing concepts. We argue that to combat hermeneutical injustices, we have to make sure not only that individuals have accurate concepts at their disposal but that they have the capabilities to use these concepts adequately. (shrink)

This paper applies the framework of epistemic injustice to the context of the asylum process, arguing that asylum seekers are typically at risk of this kind of injustice, which consists in their not being considered credible and not being listened to due to prejudices toward their social identity. More specifically, I address hermeneutical injustice in the adjudication of LGBTQ asylum claims, as well as the possibility of developing practices of hermeneutical justice in this context. I (...) start with a general analysis of epistemic injustice in the asylum process, examining the different ways in which stereotypes and prejudices hinder the process. Next, I focus on hermeneutical injustice in LGBTQ cases. In section 3, I expand on the possibility of developing hermeneutical justice in this context. Finally, I conclude by hinting at hinge epistemology as a feasible framework for research on hermeneutical injustice and justice, and at broader theoretical themes stimulated by this reflection. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker explains that hermeneutical injustice occurs when an area of one’s social experience is obscured from collective understanding. However, Fricker focuses only on the injustice suffered by those who cannot render intelligible their own oppression. I argue that there is another side to hermeneutical injustice that is other-oriented; an injustice that occurs when one cannot understand, to a basic extent, the oppression of others. Specifically, I discuss the hermeneutical injustice suffered by (...) nonhuman animals made possible by objectifying concepts available in the collective hermeneutical resource. (shrink)

Theories of ideology explain the stability of unjust social institutions by reference to the ways in which social power undermines the epistemic agency of those subordinated by them. The historically dominant model of ideology understands it as ‘false consciousness’, that is, as a set of socially distorted beliefs. The false consciousness model of ideology is, however, unsatisfactory in various respects. I argue that this, in part, explains why theorists have more recently turned to a competing model that understands the epistemic (...) constraints caused by relations of social power in terms of hermeneutical injustices. While Fricker’s theory of hermeneutical injustice avoids some implausible assumptions of false consciousness theories, it lacks, however, a plausible account of how social power can distort hermeneutical resources. I argue that there is a competing model of ideology in the Marxist tradition, according to which ideologies arise from distortions of concepts that are internal to social practices; this model takes up the insights from theories of hermeneutical injustices, and supplements them with a convincing ‘materialist’ explanation of how power, practices, and discourse are linked. (shrink)

This paper examines epistemic injustice in knowledge production concerning autism. Its aim is to further our understanding of the distinctive shapes of the kinds of epistemic injustices against autists. The paper shows how Ian Hacking’s work on autistic autobiography brings into view a form of hermeneutical injustice that autists endure with respect to their firsthand accounts of their experiences of autism. It explores how understanding the distinctive shape of this hermeneutical injustice can help us further (...) appreciate dangers and harms of using interpretive frameworks for autistic experience that neglect autists’ own contributions to the formation of words and concepts for capturing their experiences. In particular, the paper argues that even when autists are included in knowledge production concerning autistic experience, they remain vulnerable to forms of hermeneutical marginalization that can stifle the coming into being of autistic experience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hermeneutical Injustice and Best PracticeAlasdair Coles, PhD, MRCP (bio)To a doctor who routinely sees people with psychosis and neurological conditions causing strange experiences, José Porcher’s paper is challenging and troubling.Challenging, because the accusation of hermeneutical injustice is accurate. In the hurly burly of the emergency department or a government outpatient clinic, doctors resort to reductionism, for the sake of urgent efficiency. A person becomes a (...) “case of psychosis” and the immediate questions are: “Should they be admitted? Are they fit to make their own decisions? What medication should we prescribe?” In that context, spending time on analyzing the contents of the delusions, and acknowledging their meaning to the individual, is a luxury. Most doctors, burnt out by COVID and struggling to get people basic healthcare, will probably be unconcerned about hermeneutical injustice. But, disdain for the experience of psychosis leads to loss of trust between patient and doctor, as nicely illustrated by Heriot-Maitland, Knight, and Peters’ first patient. One consequence is that patients withhold information they imagine will not be well received by the medical profession. In my experience, of studying the rare entity of people with epilepsy that causes pleasurable or even religious experience, the patients have usually not discussed this with their doctor (Coles & Collicut, 2019) A tangible medical consequence is that their doctors are not aware of the risk of non-compliance with anticonvulsant drugs, so that they are at risk of serial seizures or even sudden death.Porcher’s uncritical appreciation of the Avraham case worries me. Although one of the two therapists is described as “particularly well-versed in Jewish custom and lore” (Bilu et al., 1990), they are not believers. Yet, they take on priestly roles. For instance, after identifying Avraham’s “the Black” as a demon (“which the patient did not belie” [Bilu et al., p. 110]), they prescribe incantations based on Jewish exorcism rites. And, once Avraham was better, he and his wife attributed his “miraculous cure” to the therapists who they regarded as “pious and pure hearted” (Bilu et al., p. 116). Not only are Avraham’s secular therapists being disingenuous, it is dangerous for seculars to appropriate religious language, concepts, and customs. In particular, clumsy use of exorcism rituals can lead to long-term spiritual distress. Those ministers of religion who practice deliverance [exorcism] are highly trained, not least to respect the importance of asking for psychiatric [End Page 239] help. It is unwise not to return the professional favor. Avraham’s therapists should have called in a Jewish minister, trained in clinical pastoral care, to assist them.Key issues are raised by Porcher’s analysis of the Femi case. Femi presented with a psychosis that included religious content. This is common (Sofou et al., 2021): religious imagery is present in 5% to 50% of cases of psychosis, assessed by repeated studies across multiple cultures. The medical team concluded Femi had a psychosis, because his symptoms caused him harm (social isolation, absence from work). Porcher rightly condemns Femi’s therapists because they undermined his dignity, by invalidating his experience of God. And Porcher goes on to state the “both–and” view, that something can be psychopathology and a religious experience. So far so good. But what Porcher does not allow is that some people experience psychoses with very harmful and dark religious imagery, invalidation of which is therapeutic. So, when Porcher asks “what could ever justify someone in the judgment that someone’s religious experiences are illegitimate?” the answer is: compassion. Schizophrenia is not fun. And the disease causes hallucinations that have no relation to reality; to the person I saw recently who believed her clothes were eating her, how helpful would it be to validate the nonsense of clothes with teeth? It follows that some religious delusions may be just that. And people are helped by knowing that. That is the reality of care of the deluded patient. For those therapists who just assume all religious content is inauthentic, Porcher’s article stands as a useful corrective. But assuming the opposite may be as harmful or more. There has to be judgement somewhere along the line. Best practice is that this is done... (shrink)

Miranda Fricker developed the concept of hermeneutic injustice as a subtype of epistemic injustice focusing on socially discriminatory obstacles to self-understanding. So, for example, before the consciousness- raising movement, women did not have the conceptual framework to understand their individual experiences as systematic sexual harassment. Fricker makes much of the ‘ah-ha’ moment (‘hermeneutical enlightenment’) that characterizes the experience of reaching greater self-understanding; feminist social epistemologists have described this in terms of achieving ‘standpoint’. While this is a fruitful (...) and insightful example, it has been carefully critiqued by Ishani Maitra. This paper considers other examples from Fricker’s work and from the literature in philosophy of psychiatry to make a fuller assessment of Fricker’s ideas: Asperger Disorder (which was short-lived, in DSM-IV only), postpartum depression, schizophrenia, and the general concept of a psychiatric disorder. In each of these cases, the newly proposed concept has mixed (positive and negative) consequences for self-understanding. ‘Hostage taking’ – an ethically problematic strategy described by Hilde Lindemann Nelson – is common. In all cases, moments of ‘hermeneutical enlightenment’ may pass after reflection on such mixed consequences and after further research on the social cat egories in question. (shrink)

I draw on work in social epistemology, feminist philosophy, trans philosophy, queer theory, and ethics to rethink what hermeneutical injustices are, who suffers them, and what can be done to prevent them. I identify several problems with Miranda Fricker’s original account of what hermeneutical injustices are and how they arise, and argue for a number of revisions and clarifications in order to solve these problems. One upshot of these revisions is that more people suffer hermeneutical injustices than (...) Fricker’s account acknowledges. I then outline a novel, more materialist sort of strategy for preventing hermeneutical injustices, and argue that the provision of gender-affirming healthcare is one context in which such a strategy ought to be pursued. Finally, I criticize the hermeneutical injustice literature for what I call its implicit commitment to transparency politics. By this I mean its implicit commitment to the view that when it comes to the hermeneutical dimension of people’s lives, the satisfaction of their interests in things about themselves being intelligible is all that matters. I argue that this view is mistaken, not least because it ignores the existence of two other important sorts of distinctly hermeneutical interest. (shrink)

This paper identifies and analyses a novel species of hermeneutical epistemic injustice (HI). Fricker’s traditional account analyses HI in terms of a collective conceptual gap. (Epistemic injustice: power and the ethics of knowing, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007). Building on this, Simion’s analysis (in: Bondy P, Carter JA (eds) Well-founded belief: new essays on the epistemic basing relation. Routledge, New York, 2019) suggests the phenomenon is broader, and thus more ubiquitous: specifically, that agents who have been hermeneutically (...) marginalised can be susceptible to HI through failing to ground their social experience in conceptual resources that are already available. This paper advances the literature further and presents a novel strand of the phenomena, where agents both have, and base, their experience on available concepts but are still subject to HI. I argue that this is an important species of HI that should be investigated and accounted for, and I suggest that in virtue of being hermeneutically marginalised, often agents only have available to them defective or oppressive concepts. I further provide a case study of what this can look like online and new concerns social media presents for this kind of HI. CW: Mentions of transphobia, racism, sexism, rape. (shrink)

Recent work at the junction of epistemology and political theory focuses on the notion of epistemic injustice, the injustice of being wronged as a knower. Miranda Fricker (2007) identifies two kinds of epistemic injustice. I focus here on hermeneutical injustice in an attempt to identify a difficulty for Fricker's account. In particular, I consider the significance of background social conditions and suggest that an epistemic injustice should not rely on other forms of disadvantage to (...) achieve its status as an injustice. Thus reformulated, the notion of epistemic injustice can help us to achieve an even deeper understanding of the relationship between knowledge and privilege. (shrink)

The ideas of the South African Black Consciousness Movement developed as an intellectual response to the situation of black South Africans under apartheid. Though influential, Black Consciousness ideas about how the injustice of apartheid was to be conceptualised, and what form resistance to it consequently needed to take, have always awoken controversy. Here I defend the original Black Consciousness theorists, Bantu Steve Biko and Nyameko Barney Pityana, against charges of racial inherentism, espousing a prescriptive conception of black identity, and (...) racism. I argue that, on Biko and Pityana's account, a central aspect of the injustice of South African apartheid was a hermeneutical injustice – at first deliberately perpetrated, but structurally self-reproducing – against the oppressed groups. Thus illuminated, I argue, the ideas of the original Black Consciousness theorists have great plausibility, connect interestingly with contemporary thinking about race and justice, and are of practical relevance today both in South Africa and elsewhere. (shrink)

Paul-Mikhail Podosky introduces the notion of other-oriented hermeneutical injustice and argues that non-human animals are often the subjects of such injustice. In this paper, I argue that although the notion of other-oriented hermeneutical injustice is coherent, Podosky’s examples – including his primary case of non-human animals – are not instances of it. I attempt to show that an epistemology of ignorance serves as a better theoretical basis for Podosky’s argument. In the final section of the (...) paper, I discuss a case that, at first glance, seems to be one of other-oriented hermeneutical injustice. However, I argue that ultimately an epistemology of ignorance gives us a better account of the case. (shrink)

It is well-established that algorithms can be instruments of injustice. It is less frequently discussed, however, how current modes of AI deployment often make the very discovery of injustice difficult, if not impossible. In this article, we focus on the effects of algorithmic profiling on epistemic agency. We show how algorithmic profiling can give rise to epistemic injustice through the depletion of epistemic resources that are needed to interpret and evaluate certain experiences. By doing so, we not (...) only demonstrate how the philosophical conceptual framework of epistemic injustice can help pinpoint potential, systematic harms from algorithmic profiling, but we also identify a novel source of hermeneutical injustice that to date has received little attention in the relevant literature: epistemic fragmentation. Epistemic fragmentation is a structural characteristic of algorithmically-mediated environments that isolate individuals, making it more difficult to develop, uptake and apply new epistemic resources. This, in turn, can impede the identification and conceptualisation of emerging harms in these environments. We trace the occurrence of hermeneutical injustice back to the fragmentation of the epistemic experiences of individuals, who are left more vulnerable by the inability to share, compare, and learn from shared experiences. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyze the role of phenomenal knowledge in understanding the experiences of the victims of hermeneutical injustice. In particular, I argue that understanding that is enriched by phenomenal knowledge is a powerful tool to mitigate hermeneutical injustice. I proceed as follows: Firstly, I investigate the requirements for a full understanding of the experiences at the center of hermeneutical injustice and I argue that phenomenal knowledge is key to full understanding. Secondly, I (...) distinguish between direct phenomenal knowledge and imaginative phenomenal knowledge. Thirdly, I investigate whether one can gain imaginative phenomenal knowledge of the experiences of members of social groups other than one´s own. I consider reasons for pessimism in this regard and show that they are not conclusive. Then, I provide a model of how outgroup members can acquire imaginative knowledge of the experiences of the victims of hermeneutical injustice. Finally, I connect the varieties of phenomenal knowledge with different grades of understanding an experience and I outline how understanding that involves imaginative phenomenal knowledge helps to overcome various forms of hermeneutical injustice. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between hermeneutical injustice in religious settings and religious trauma and spiritual violence. In it I characterize a form of hermeneutical injustice that arises when experiences are obscured from collective understanding by normatively laden concepts, and I argue that this form of HI often plays a central role in cases of religious trauma and spiritual violence, even those involving children. In section I, I introduce the reader to the phenomena of religious trauma (...) and spiritual violence. In section II, I describe the role normatively laden concepts play in shaping our social experience. I then elucidate how they can contribute to HI. In section III, I provide a brief overview of the history of some significant identity prejudices in the history of Christianity and argue that children can properly be understood as victims of HI within some religious communities. I then return in section IV to the examples of religious trauma and spiritual violence offered throughout the article and demonstrate that HI plays an important causal role in each of them. HIs sometimes constitute spiritual and religious harms; at other times they create an epistemic environment conducive to spiritual abuse. (shrink)

Reply to Hilkje Hänel, ‘Who’s to Blame? Hermeneutical Misfire, Forward-Looking Responsibility, and Collective Accountability’.

Social epistemologists use the term hermeneutical injustice to refer to a form of epistemic injustice in which a structural prejudice in the economy of collective interpretive resources results in a person’s inability to understand his/her/their own social experience. This essay argues that the phenomenon of unacknowledged date rapes, that is, when a person experiences sexual assault yet does not conceptualize him/her/their self as a rape victim, should be regarded as a form of hermeneutical injustice. The (...) fact that the concept of date rape has been widely used for at least three decades indicates the intractability of hermeneutical injustices of this sort and the challenges with its overcoming. (shrink)

Hermeneutical injustice, as a species of epistemic injustice, is when members of marginalized groups are unable to make their experiences communicatively intelligible due to a deficiency in collective hermeneutical resources, where this deficiency is traditionally interpreted as a lack of concepts. Against this understanding, this paper argues that even if adequate concepts that describe marginalized groups’ experiences are available within the collective hermeneutical resources, hermeneutical injustice can persist. This paper offers an analysis of (...) how this can happen by introducing the notion of hermeneutical excess: the introduction of additional concepts into collective hermeneutical resources that function to obscure agents’ understanding of the lived experiences of marginalized groups. The injustice of hermeneutical excesses happens not due to hermeneutical marginalization (the exclusion of members of marginalized groups from the construction of hermeneutical resources), but rather hermeneutical domination: when members of dominant groups have been inappropriately included in the construction of hermeneutical resources. By taking as exemplary cases the concepts of “reverse racism” and “non-consensual sex” this paper shows how such excesses are introduced as a kind of defensive strategy used by dominant ideologies precisely when progress with social justice is made. (shrink)

To date the wealth of literature on abortion has been dedicated to resolving the question of its legal and moral permissibility in relation to the fetus and pregnant woman as subjects of moral standing. This has created a dichotomised way of talking about abortion chiefly in terms of conflicting rights; as a „wrongful‟ versus „legitimate‟ form of killing. The tension between this individualistic rights-based discourse and the „ethic of care‟ to which women are often expected to conform in their moral (...) deliberations gives rise to a stigmatising picture of a woman who aborts as „callous‟ or „selfish.‟ Males who share in abortion decisions are rarely subject to the same type of criticism. In this paper I aim to conceptualise the impact of normative femininity and social judgement on women‟s capacity for moral self-determination in abortion contexts within the framework of an injustice. I will do so by examining women‟s discursive participation with respect to abortion, and by analysing the impact that abortion stigma has on women‟s moral agency and lived experience. This will enable me to demonstrate how women may be uniquely subject to a hermeneutical injustice, which in abortion contexts gives way to a phenomenological injustice. (shrink)

In this article, James Joshua Coleman and Jon Wargo interrogate the (queer) child as a concept and specter that haunts civic life in the United States. Whereas scholars across a range of fields and standpoints have questioned the value of LGBTQ+ inclusion in public school curricula, and society more broadly, together Coleman and Wargo wonder at the capacity of civics education to include queer (as opposed to LGBTQ+) citizens within the cis-straight nation-state. To explore this possibility, they read across two (...) bills: (1) H.R. 9197 (Stop the Sexualization of Children Act), and (2) Illinois House Bill 246 (Inclusive Curriculum Law). In so doing, they highlight how the (Queer) Child operates as an organizing binary logic within these bills and examine how hermeneutical injustice impedes the formation of a truly queer civics education. Specifically, Coleman and Wargo demonstrate how hermeneutical injustice limits the nature of inclusion for LGBTQ+ citizens, both for exclusionary, anti-LGBTQ+ policy and for seemingly inclusive legislation. Pointing to scenes that demonstrate hermeneutical justice and queer survivance, they conclude by suggesting the construction of a queer civics education that stands outside the binary logics of the cis-straight nation-state. (shrink)

This article argues that rape myths and domestic abuse myths constitute hermeneutical injustices. Drawing on empirical research, I show that the prevalence of these myths makes victims of rape and of domestic abuse less likely to apply those terms to their experiences. Using Sally Haslanger's distinction between manifest and operative concepts, I argue that in these cases, myths mean that victims hold a problematic operative concept, or working understanding, which prevents them from identifying their experience as one of rape (...) or of domestic abuse. Since victims in this situation lack the conceptual resources needed to render their experience sufficiently intelligible, they are suffering a form of hermeneutical injustice. Attending to this distinctive case sheds new light not only on the functioning of social myths of this kind but on the nature of hermeneutical injustice itself, since the case of the victim who accepts myths is importantly different from other cases of hermeneutical injustice discussed in the literature to date. In practical terms, this analysis supports calls for juries in rape trials to be warned about rape myths at the start of the trial, and may have implications for calls for statutory Sex and Relationships Education in schools. (shrink)