Epistemic Injustice and the Artistic Imagination

Epistemic injustice makes the object of a rich literature at the intersection of several fields of philosophical and scientific enquiry. While Melissa Fricker’s 2007 book Epistemic Injustice triggered a flurry of responses, the topic has been of sustained interest in feminist, critical race and post-colonial studies. This literature focuses on identifying the individual and structural causes of epistemic injustice, on examining the effects on the immediate victims and the community as a whole and on delineating solutions to this complex problem. This paper seeks to contribute one more potential solution and suggests that artworks can, under certain circumstances, play an effective role in revealing and problematizing the causes and impact of epistemic injustice and of the other forms of injustice to which it is inextricably related. Building on insights from the philosophy of art, it argues that artworks’ epistemic functions – cognitive-conceptual, experiential and moral – can help us understand how epistemic injustice functions in conjunction with other forms of injustice and imagine how we can mobilize politically against it. An illustration based on Audre Lorde’s poetic work shows the plausibility and salience of the theoretical proposal.