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Fem Leg Stud (2014) 22:311317
DOI 10.1007/s10691-014-9260-6
BOOK REVIEW
Jos Medina: The Epistemology of Resistance
Oxford University Press, 368 pp, 22.99, 2013, ISBN: 978-0199929047
Jeremy C. Bradley
Published online: 16 May 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014
If truth seeking and the quest for knowledge are at the heart of the legal process, then inequality is the enemy of law. In oppressive situations, epistemic relationships go askew, and the inequality created by, through, or from this oppression handicaps the capacity to know. As Jos Medina puts it in his book The Epistemology of Resistance, social injustices breed epistemic injustices; they are two sides of the same coin (27). Oppressive dogma, such as sexism, racism, and homophobia, instil in epistemic actors a cognitive distrust thereby forcing minorities to try to legitimate their way of thinking (Austin 1989, 540). Put another way, oppressive ideologies lead people to under- or over-estimate the cognitive capacities of not only others, but of themselves. A failure to recognise such capacities can moreover serve as a foundation for biases and prejudices that distort perception, judgment, and reasoning.
In this review of Medinas book, I will discuss how epistemic injustices have negative impacts on knowledge-sharing relationships. Epistemic injustices do this by systemically disadvantaging and mistreating minorities, depicting them as intellectually inferior, as lacking agency, or by treating them as less credible than members of other groups. It is not uncommon then for those that are othered to have a distorted image of themselves as knowers or givers of knowledge. This creates a cyclical system of oppression whereby the othered come to underestimate their cognitive worth, creating an inferiority complex with negative epistemic consequences (Sztompka 2000; Liebich 2008). These social and epistemic injustices have ramications in multiple aspects of life and so when an other nds herself the subject or object of narrative, she may either feel that she lacks the capacity to give testimony, or she may not be able to give good testimony despite her best efforts, if her hearers overestimate their cognitive powers and/or unfairly discriminate against her.
J. C. Bradley (&)
London School of Business and Finance, London, UK e-mail: [email protected]
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I will focus on a particular kind of testimony that Medina calls epistemic cooperation...