Analysis Of Fricker's Epistemic Injustice

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Both Fricker and Mills, in Epistemic Injustice and White Ignorance, respectfully, take on opposing stances on who is truly impacted and suffers an epistemic disadvantage in the instance of certain injustices. Fricker takes on the position that due to hermeneutical injustice, the oppressed are those who suffer an epistemic disadvantage. On the contrary, Mills argues that it is not the oppressed that suffer an epistemic disadvantage but rather the oppressors. This argument can be substantiated for both groups. For the oppressed there will be ignorance due to their inability to access certain areas of knowledge, and for the oppressor there will also be ignorance that is created due to the oppression they exact on other groups they deem lesser …show more content…
This means that one can have part of he or she’s social experiences hidden from collective grasp due to structural identity prejudices. The biggest issue with this form of injustice is that it does not affect the society as a whole instead just those who are the main ones targeted her mindset. There is no true "culprit" of this form of injustice because it is structural injustice. With hermeneutical injustice, understandings are structured in a specific manner, because of this so can the social facts that aid in these understandings. Thus, different groups can find themselves hermeneutically disadvantaged for a variety of reasons, however not all of these disadvantages would strike one as unjust or unfair. Also when defining hermeneutical injustice, Fricker makes the clarification that both the harasser and the harassed are mentally handicapped, in the sense that neither party has a clear understanding of the implications of the actions of the harasser (Fricker 151). Later on, Fricker introduces hermeneutical marginalization which involves a subject being prevented from generating meaning pertaining to some areas of the social world. This means that in other areas the subject can have fuller participation, and due to this, this type of marginalization can afflict individuals in a differentiated manner (Fricker 153). Often times it is generally the socially powerless groups or individuals that suffer from hermeneutical marginalization. Also, hermeneutical injustice, can then be broken down into two types of injustice; systematic and incidental. Incidental (generic) hermeneutical injustice involves having a significant area of one 's social experience obscured from collective grasp due to hermeneutical marginalization that is localized and one-off, but can be potentially disastrous in an individual 's life. On the other hand, systematic

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