Title of Research

Epistemic Injustice: Limits of Recognition over Redistribution

Nabanita Barman
Philosophy as such is considered to be a domain of essentially contested concepts. Strive to reach
a guaranteed position, never ends. One such concept that has been discussed and debated by an
English Philosopher named Miranda Fricker, the notion of Epistemic Injustice who started this
project to present that there is a type of injustice which has to do with knowledge. The literal
definition of epistemic injustice as given by Fricker in her book Epistemic Injustice: Power and
the Ethics of Knowing (2007) is “people can be distinctively wronged in their capacity as
knowers. Perhaps the most obvious type of epistemic injustice occurs when people are unfairly
prevented from obtaining knowledge because of their lack of access to education, resources or
social networks.” She discussed about two broad sphere of unjust epistemic injustices-
Testimonial Injustice and Hermeneutic Injustice. Testimonial injustice occurs when the speaker
is neglected of having adequate knowledge and presumes to be less credible. It comes about
without our intending to happen, just because of the prejudice how it works on us below the level
of believe. Any source of speech act coming under the prejudicial credibility deficit can be said
to give rise to testimonial injustice. Clearly it matters from a purely epistemic point of view, if a
hearer`s prejudice wrongly deflates his/her judgement of credibility, then the flow of knowledge
is stopped and truths fail to follow from knower to inquirer. Whereas Hermeneutical injustice
comes before any communication takes place where the individual fails to provide an experience
in a clear form; this can occur to oneself or communicatively to another. This kind of epistemic
injustice happens when a subject who is already hermeneutically marginalized (that is, they
belong to a group which does not have access to equal participation in the generation of social
meanings) is thereby put at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to making sense of a
significant area of their social experience. An instance might be of a working woman whose
voice is often ignored due to lack of the ability to deliver in a scenario. Both the injustices are
extreme form of injustices as they both regards in internal as well as external damage of the
individual as a moral and intellectual person.

The reason I have gained interest in this topic is its true nature of observing injustice involving
knowledge claim. However, Fricker’s explanation could not catch the necessity of the term

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Redistribution which is an important element against epistemic injustice. She has dealt epistemic
injustice from recognition perspective because she talks about identity prejudice but somehow
could not catch the need of redistribution process. This thought allowed me to re-observe the
notion of epistemic injustice and its clear interpretation of identity and power. People are
opposed to injustice but the disturbing truth is that people who intend to be unprejudiced are
influenced by biases and stereotypes unknowingly and thus commits to unjust judgements.
Why the concept of Epistemic Injustice has marked a great importance in today’s world is
because knowledge is highly given prestige in our society. If we want to reflect our importance
of being accepted as a knower, we will understand that lacking credibility is a significant
difficulty if one wants to make significant knowledge claims. This is a problem dealing with
epistemology; but the hidden concern to deal with is `Recognition` and `Redistribution`.
Recognition theory holds the failure to properly recognize and afford somebody the epistemic
respect they deserve and it plays a significant role in growing their self-confidence as rational
knower.
It has been argued that, in political theory a concern with the distribution of economic
opportunities and resources has recently been displaced by absorption with the acknowledgement
of cultural identities and differences. Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth in their jointly authored
book Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange argued their very
different reactions to this development. Fraser argues that redistribution and recognition are two
mutually irreducible elements of social justice. But Honneth rejects the idea by arguing that
recognition alone can provide the basis of the theory of justice. For Fraser both redistribution and
recognition are two separate elements of justice. Redistribution expresses economic
subordination, and recognition expresses cultural subordination. It is true that both the author
accepts that recognition holds a crucial part in understanding social and political movements of
the present time. However, the two philosophers diverge their idea concerning this articulation
and, in particular, the role to grant to the concept of recognition alone in a theory of social
justice. The redistribution theory is basically related to class politics and that of recognition is
related to identity politics such as gender, race, nationality, and ethnicity.
Nancy Fraser proposed a “dualist perspective” which distinguishes the issues of justice
concerning the cultural domain from the issues of justice concerning the economic one.
According to her, we cannot prevent the injustices of culture with a politics of redistribution and
similarly, we cannot prevent the economic injustices with identity politics. Therefore, she
suggests articulating a conception of justice concerning cultural recognition with a conception of
justice concerning economic redistribution. Nancy Fraser is the one that is closest to the liberal
tradition. She named her model as a “deontological liberalism” because it is grounded in the
liberal notion of equal autonomy and equal moral worth. She calls it ‘deontological’ because she
also accepts the liberal distinction between the just and the good and refuses to draw the theory
of justice to particular conceptions of the good. From the concept of redistribution and
recognition it can be said that the reason behind the equal treatment of all is not that all can
participate equally in the society, but that each can develop fully in their own capacities.