Miranda Fricker's Epistemic Injustice (2007) Revisited: Coloniality, Intersectionality, Decoloniality

In this paper I argue that Miranda Fricker’s theory of epistemic injustice should be epistemically de-colonised in order to accommodate rather than obscure the everyday experiences of socio-historically oppressed groups, particularly multiply-oppressed groups. Such experiences should be understood as central cases of epistemic injustice because multiple, intersecting socio-historical oppressions (e.g. of race, class, gender, sexuality, disability) interlock to produce complex, acute forms of injustice, including (but not limited to) double epistemic injustice. My argument is as follows: 1) Fricker states a commitment to non-ideal theory and emphasises injustice rather than justice i.e. what is found in non-ideal, real-world experiences. 2) Yet, intersectional experiences and subsequent material conditions and knowledges are excluded from Fricker’s theory. 3) Consequently, Fricker’s theory obscures the non-ideal: the real epistemic injustices and subsequent material inequalities of multiply-oppressed groups.

I trace this theoretical inadequacy to Fricker’s commitment to a neutral ideal of reason-as-unmediated and unlocated. To highlight the implications of this, I link ethical neutrality to Aníbal Quijano’s coloniality/modernity matrix of power.