Epistemic injustice and Individual identity: recognition, affectivity, and care
- Autores: Alicia García Álvarez
- Directores de la Tesis: Francisco Javier Gil Martín (dir. tes.), Katherine Jenkins (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universidad de Oviedo ( España ) en 2023
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Jesús Vega Encabo (presid.), Noelia Bueno Gómez (secret.), Luis Manuel Valdés Villanueva (voc.), Javier Suárez Díaz (voc.), Nadja El Kassar (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Investigaciones Humanísticas por la Universidad de Oviedo
- Materias:
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- Resumen
Since the last decades, the epistemic dimension has gained importance when it comes to understanding and categorizing political problems in which current philosophical theory and practice are involved, from the framework of epistemology to ethics and political philosophy, and its increasingly frequent study has proven to be key when it comes to identifying forms of injustice and moral wrongs that target socially powerless groups both collectively and in their individual development. On the other hand, the feminist perspective continues to provide an essential instrument and framework for examining these problems from a critical and transformative point of view.
This dissertation project assumes a feminist perspective within the line of study known as epistemic (in)justice and seeks to delve, within this line, into those problems related to the impact of epistemic harms on the individual dimension of victims. The approach from which the research is based is thus part of the political turn within the field of social and feminist epistemologies, but also tries to account for other everyday and more concrete aspects of the former that have often gone undertheorized in the mainstream accounts in these lines. Specifically, the thesis seeks to shed more light on how practices of epistemic injustice can affect victims as concrete and situated individuals.
First, I defend the hypothesis that, especially in cases of persistent and systematic incidence, experiences of epistemic injustice have a negative impact on the affective and identitary development of the individual person. In other words, I propose to transcend the classic definition of the harm of epistemic injustice as a wrong that affects the victims exclusively in their capacity as knowers and extend this definition in a more comprehensive and global sense. During the dissertation, I develop this idea by applying, in addition to the studies on epistemic injustice, the theoretical frameworks of theory of recognition (especially, through a deepening of the relationship between intersubjective recognition, moral self-perception and epistemic self-perception), but also those of the epistemology of testimony (with particular emphasis on the line on the assurance view ). Throughout these analyses, I apply transversally and centrally the methodologies and theoretical contributions of feminist philosophies, particularly with regard to their epistemologies and moral theory. In this way, I interpret the concepts of the epistemic agent, epistemic self-perception, testimonial and hermeneutic contribution, epistemic wrongs and, finally, epistemic care in light of the feminist perspective.
The results that this thesis yields, therefore, endow the nature and scope of the individual wrong of epistemic injustice with a more serious, comprehensive and deeper meaning than other theories had previously contemplated, without thereby eliminating its seriousness as a structural and political phenomenon. These results do not only matter in themselves insofar they are revealing of a dimension that is often neglected in the most representative studies of these problems, but also for the possibilities and paths for future research that, in my opinion, they leave open. Specifically, the reconceptualization of epistemic injustice as a global and affective phenomenon opens the doors to further explorations of the meaning of what we understand by epistemic and its connections with other more embodied dimensions of the person, which have traditionally been categorized in isolation from the former. On the other hand, the conclusions of this dissertation also inspire new ways of rethinking solutions to the problems of epistemic harms from perspectives based on the epistemic-affective transformation of society. In the final part of this work, I propose the notion of epistemic care , examined and presented in the light of a practical case based on a real event in Spanish society (namely, the case known as La Manada or the Wolfpack ). The notion, which I explain in detail in the last chapter, puts an end to the dissertation and is intended as a response to the analyses revealed throughout its development, but is also offered as a project with the ambition of contributing to future discussions regarding epistemic resistance and justice.
