Imagination as Resistance: The Liberatory Forces of the Mind against Epistemic Injustice

Room – Roscoe 2.8

Somreeta Paul (University of California, Santa Cruz)

A particularly compelling case of epistemic injustice arises when there is a deficit in our shared tools of social interpretation, the collective hermeneutical resource, such that marginalized social groups are at a disadvantage in making sense of their distinctive and important experiences (Fricker, 2007). However, hermeneutical injustice persists when marginalized groups have produced their own interpretive tools to make sense of those experiences, which Goetze calls ‘hermeneutical dissent’ (2018). This, in relation to testimonial injustice, is a relatively new interest in epistemology that deserves further exploration. For instance, there are cases where the ones who are hermeneutically resourceful are, in fact, hermeneutically (and thus epistemically) harmed. They possess the conceptual repertoire to comprehend their experience and initiate successful communication, but instead become the victims of misinterpretation, appropriation, neglect, and, in the process, epistemically harmed. On the other hand, the ones who are hermeneutically deprived or can afford to be so, through their privileged racial, gendered, cultural, and class hierarchy, become the epistemic violators. Further, epistemic violators not only can be ignorant of their epistemic limitations but also ignorant of their ignorance (epistemic meta-ignorance). This can cause the oppressed to be disinterested in introducing their concepts to the worldly collective of hermeneutical resources because confinement and privacy can protect their repertoire from hermeneutic imperialism and appropriation. In light of these recent developments in epistemology literature, one might wonder how it can be ameliorative. As Medina proposes, it is the responsibility of all agents, both belonging to hermeneutically deprived and hermeneutically resourceful communities, but especially the deliberate or non-deliberate epistemic violators, to prevent hermeneutical death. But what are these responsibilities, and how do we initiate them? What and how revolutionaries like Sojourner Truth’s definition of women (1851), Maria Laguna’s “loving perception” (1989), Audrey Lorde’s “Poetry is not a luxury,” or Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s “The Adivasi Will Not Dance” (2015) have in common that contributed to the hermeneutical expansion and prompted epistemic friction? Most importantly, how can we, as individual epistemic agents, do the same, no matter which category we belong to? Medina (2012) and Amy Kind (2025) have recently explored this social dimension of imagination. A change in resistant belief and comprehensive epistemic friction can be achieved by resistant imagination at the personal, interpersonal, and collective levels by virtue of its inherent ability to accommodate counter-moral situations. They can act as liberatory exertion to shatter epistemic hegemony and strategic ignorance. Further, imagination can aid empathetic perspective-taking, which is critical for just democratic deliberation. Broadly construed, it can be the responsibility of the socially privileged to channel imagination into empathetic perspective-taking. Or it can be the responsibility of the socially marginalized to articulate their experiences that help the socially privileged to engage with them. I aim to explore the benefits and risks of this line of thinking.

Wednesday 3rd September