Representation and epistemic violence

Abstract

Sometimes an individual gets taken as speaking for a wider group without laying claim to any such authority – they are thrust unwillingly, and sometimes even unknowingly, into the role of that group’s representative. Especially for members of subordinated social groups in certain contexts, this can be hard to shake: despite their best efforts to disavow any authority to speak in the name of others, their voice might be taken as the voice of their group. In this paper we explore the intuitive injustice involved in such cases. After establishing the felicity conditions of speaking for a group, we argue that certain forms of pernicious ignorance often stand in the way of the fulfilment of these conditions. The result is a distinctive kind of ‘epistemic violence’, which can result in the silencing of both the group that is taken to be spoken for, and the spokesperson who is taken to speak for them.

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ORCID for Dina Lupin: orcid.org/0000-0002-6531-8066

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