José Médina

In this talk I discuss some of the communicative and epistemic challenges that oppressed groups face when they try to resist their oppression. I focus on stigmatized social groups, such as queer communities, which are subject to targeted social silencing and invisibilization. I argue that, for these communicatively marginalized groups, resisting oppression requires silence-breaking actions, such as the kiss-ins and other visibility actions of queer activism. My analysis elucidates how stigmatized protesting voices can empower themselves through what I call, that is, through practices of resistance in which oppressed subjects give communicative and epistemic support to each other. I discuss how social silences are resisted by grassroots liberation movements, and how marginalized subjects use public protest as a mechanism of epistemic self-empowerment. My central claim is that overcoming the history of silencing and social invisibility of stigmatized groups requires self-empowerment and “a revolution of our sensibility” through epistemic activism.

People’s lives and pursuits are interconnected and interdependent. People may seek to flourish in mutually supportive ways or at the cost of others. In individualistic societies, agents, groups, and institutions typically have a blind spot for how the flourishing they pursue in their own paths of development may be entangled with the differential flourishing possibilities and even the withering of others. This chapter argues that this blind spot is in fact a cultivated insensitivity or active ignorance, what this chapter calls _relational insensitivity_. Relational insensitivity reflects the failure of an epistemic responsibility: the responsibility of being attuned to the interdependence of ways of flourishing and withering entangled with our own flourishing and withering. Drawing from feminist theory and critical race theory and critically engaging with William James, the chapter shows that there is a Will-Not-to-Know that is at the core of American individualism and has been at the service of imperialistic and neo-colonial attitudes and practices. The first section exploits the convergence between pragmatism and feminist standpoint theory to give an account of the critical attentiveness to lived experiences needed for _relational sensitivity_, that is, attunement to the interdependence between one’s flourishing/withering and that of others. The second section supplements this account in conversation with critical race theory and epistemologies of ignorance through an elucidation of _relational insensitivity_ and its roots in practices of _social deadening_. The final section sketches a proposal for resisting relational insensitivity through _epistemic activism_, illustrated by the work of the Colombian visual artist Doris Salcedo.

Following Cornel West and Leonard Harris, this chapter reflects on how pragmatism can address the _tragedy_ of racial injustices and meet the _insurrectionist_ challenges these injustices raise. _Pace_ those who argue that pragmatism and insurrectionism are incompatible, this chapter argues for the possibility of an _insurrectionist pragmatism_ as a response to racial injustices. First, in order to carve out a conceptual space for an insurrectionist pragmatism, it argues against pragmatist conceptions of meliorism as a naive _optimism_ or gradual _reformism_. Second, it argues that we can find conceptual and motivational resources in pragmatism for insurrectionary thought and action in the egalitarian notion of human flourishing and in the pluralistic view of community and democratic culture. Drawing on Maria Stewart, the chapter offers an analysis of racial oppression as a form of _epistemic death_ that calls for _epistemic insurrection_, and highlights how pragmatism can be used for resisting racial epistemic oppression.

This chapter provides an introduction to the volume by outlining the structure of the collection, as well as the main content, themes, and approaches employed in the essays. The book is divided into the four following sections: “Decolonial _Movidas_: Gender, Community, and Liberation,” “Making Feminist Selves: Self-Authority, Affect, and Narrativity,” “Knowing Otherwise: Language, Translation, and Alternative Consciousness,” and “Aesthetic Longings: Latina Styles, Bodily Vulnerability, and Queer Desires.” Each section highlights a diverse range of issues and methods addressed by Latinx feminists, as well as an array of Latinx authors whose work has been pivotal in shaping the area of study.

In this chapter, José Medina and Tempest Henning examine the role that bodily testimony can play in social and political epistemology. They develop an account of how to understand the testimonial force and content of non-verbal communicative acts, such as gestures and facial expressions, that depends on three features: the communicative context, the embodied positionality of the communicator, and the communicative uptake that the audience gives, or fails to give, to the expressive behavior of the body. In particular, Medina and Henning argue that under conditions of racial oppression, all racialized bodies—non-white as well as white—are epistemically valued in different ways and thus receive different kinds of communicative uptake. At the same time, Medina and Henning argue that bodily group testimony is well suited for cultivating in-group communicative solidarity and for giving center-stage to in-group members in testimonial dynamics, and so bodily communication can be used in resistant testimony.

_Setting the stage with a selection of readings from important nineteenth century philosophers, this reader on truth puts in conversation some of the main philosophical figures from the twentieth century in the analytic, continental, and pragmatist traditions._ Focuses on the value or normativity of truth through exposing the dialogues between different schools of thought Features philosophical figures from the twentieth century in the analytic, continental, and pragmatist traditions Topics addressed include the normative relation between truth and subjectivity, consensus, art, testimony, power, and critique Includes essays by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, James, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, Levinas, Arendt, Foucault, Rorty, Davidson, Habermas, Derrida, and many others.

Epistemic injustice is one of the most important and ground-breaking subjects to have emerged in philosophy in recent years. By examining the way injustice can occur to individuals when they are undermined or not ‘heard’ on account of their gender, race or age (as in _To Kill a Mockingbird_), and the injustices that can occur to individuals or groups because a society lacks an entire concept, such as sexual harassment, epistemic injustice draws attention to the fundamental links between knowledge, ethics and power. The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors the Handbook is divided into five clear parts: Core Concepts Liberatory Epistemologies and Axes of Oppression Schools of Thought and Subfields within Epistemology Socio-political, Ethical, and Psychological Dimensions of Knowing Case Studies of Epistemic Injustice. As well as fundamental topics such as testimonial and hermeneutic injustice and virtue epistemology, the Handbook includes chapters on important issues such as moral imagination, objectivity and objectification, implicit bias, gender and race. Also included are chapters on areas in applied ethics and philosophy, such as media ethics, education and health care. The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice is essential reading for students and researchers in ethics, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy and feminism, and philosophy of race. It will also be very useful for those in related fields, such as sociology, education and law.

El autor enmarca el complejo problema de la Generación del 98 en un amplio estudio de las dos crisis de final de siglo: la nacional y la europea. Defiende, después, que la evocación de estos intelectuales y escritores, al margen de ciertas celebraciones exageradas o ciertas posturas demasiado exaltadoras, es completamente necesaria para el progreso de la racionalidad y la convivencia de los españoles a las puertas de un nuevo Milenio. Entre aquellos hombres que soñaron España y lucharon por hacerla más culta, más tolerante, más justa, más plural, más universal, Giner de los Ríos y Manuel B. Cossío aparecen como dos hitos insustituibles a los que, necesariamente, hay que recordar