Hermeneutical Injustice: Distortion and Conceptual Aptness

Hypatia 37 (2):343-363 (2022)
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Abstract

This article develops a new approach for theorizing about hermeneutical injustice. According to a dominant view, hermeneutical injustice results from a hermeneutical gap: one lacks the conceptual tools needed to make sense of, or to communicate, important social experience, where this lack is a result of an injustice in the background social methods used to determine hermeneutical resources. I argue that this approach is incomplete. It fails to capture an important species of hermeneutical injustice which doesn’t result from a lack of hermeneutical resources, but from the overabundance of distorting and oppressive concepts which function to crowd-out, defeat, or preempt the application of a more accurate hermeneutical resource. I propose a broader analysis that better respects the dynamic relationship between hermeneutical resources and the social and political contexts in which they are implemented.

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Author's Profile

Arianna Falbo
Bentley University

Citations of this work

Epistemic Courage.Jonathan Ichikawa - forthcoming - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Defensiveness and Identity.Audrey Yap & Jonathan Ichikawa - 2023 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association:1-20.
Hermeneutical Injustice.Arianna Falbo - forthcoming - In Kurt Sylvan, Jonathan Dancy, Matthias Steup & Ernest Sosa (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Epistemology (3rd Edition). Wiley Blackwell.

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