•  2
    What Philosophy Does (Not) Know
    In Heidi Grasswick & Nancy Arden McHugh (eds.), Making the Case: Feminist and Critical Race Philosophers Engage Case Studies, Suny Press. pp. 127-150. 2021.
  •  8
    Using Wittgenstein Critically: A Political Approach to Philosophy
    Philosophy Today 30 (6): 800-827. 2002.
  •  62
    Propaganda, Inequality, and Epistemic Movement
    Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 31 (3): 345-356. 2016.
    I analyze Jason Stanley’s model for how propaganda works, paying close attention to Stanley’s own rhetoric. I argue that Stanley’s language be supplemented with a vocabulary that helps us to attend to what sorts of things move democratic knowers (epistemically speaking), what sorts of things do not, and why. In addition, I argue that the reasonableness necessary for considering the views of others within democratic deliberation ought to be understood, not as an empathic, but as an interactive ca…Read more
  • The Routledge Handbook on Epistemic Injustice (edited book)
    Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. 2016.
  •  174
    This essay reflects on some of the problems with characterizing collective epistemic resistance to oppression as “unthinking” or antithetical to reason by highlighting the epistemic labor involved in contending with and resisting epistemic oppression. To do so, I develop a structural notion of epistemic gaslighting in order to highlight structural features of contexts within which collective epistemic resistance to oppression occurs. I consider two different forms of epistemic echoing as modes o…Read more
  •  192
    Epistemic Agency Under Oppression
    Philosophical Papers 49 (2): 233-251. 2020.
    The literature on epistemic injustice has been helpful for highlighting some of the epistemic harms that have long troubled those working in area studies that concern oppressed populations. Nonetheless, a good deal of this literature is oriented toward those in a position to perpetrate injustices, rather than those who historically have been harmed by them. This orientation, I argue, is ill-suited to the work of epistemic decolonization. In this essay, I call and hold attention to the epistemic …Read more
  •  3
    Understanding Across Difference: A Wittgensteinian Feminist Approach
    Dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook. 2003.
    Is there a basis for understanding across differences of social position and cultural context? Feminists have treated this question in attempting to build a coherent analysis of gender that does not elide such differences as race, nationality, class, and sexual orientation. Yet there has been much difficulty in articulating a theory of knowledge in which understanding and difference are compatible. After examining Lorenzo Simpson's hermeneutic account of cross-cultural understanding and Sandra H…Read more
  •  783
    I distinguish between two senses in which feminists have argued that the knower is social: 1. situated or socially positioned and 2. interdependent. I argue that these two aspects of the knower work in cooperation with each other in a way that can produce willful hermeneutical ignorance, a type of epistemic injustice absent from Miranda Fricker's Epistemic Injustice. Analyzing the limitations of Fricker's analysis of the trial of Tom Robinson in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird with attention …Read more
  •  16
    Diversity and Communication in Feminist Theory
    Social Philosophy Today 17 153-162. 2001.
    When diversity ligures in ways that insulate women's differences from one another rather than theorizing about them together, it is difficult to see how interactionamong women that recognizes their differences is possible. In turn, the possibility of communication may seen inordinately difficult when taking place among diverse groups about their differences. While not denying these difficulties, I want to avoid approaches and practices that may draw us into a stalemate in considering possibiliti…Read more
  •  73
    Understanding Across Difference And Analogical Reasoning In Simpson’s The Unfinished Project
    Journal for Peace and Justice Studies 19 (1): 37-49. 2009.
    In his book The Unfinished Project, Lorenzo Simpson articulates a hermeneutical model for understanding across difference that stresses the importance of analogies. While noting much that is helpful in his account, in this paper I question Simpson’s emphasis on analogical reasoning. After detailing Simpson’s approach, I explore some problems with analogies as a route to understanding. I examine some assumptions behind the idea that one must analogize from what one already understands in order to…Read more
  •  111
    Knowing (with) Others
    Social Philosophy Today 22 187-198. 2006.
    Feminist epistemologists and feminist philosophers of science have argued that our efforts to know the world are always situated, accompanied by such things as desires, beliefs, and interests that guide and shape what it is we discover and perhaps even what we can know. If this is the case, how is one to be receptive to that which is outside of the purview of one’s current understanding of the world? Some feminists have argued that in order to know more effectively and more broadly we need to ma…Read more
  •  9
    In The Alchemy of Race and Rights Patricia Williams notes that when people of color are asked to understand such practices as racial profiling by putting themselves in the shoes of white people, they are, in effect, being asked to, ‘look into the mirror of frightened white faces for the reality of their undesirability’ (1992, 46). While we often see understanding another as ethically and epistemically virtuous, in this paper I argue that it is wrong in some cases to ask another to attempt to und…Read more
  •  77
    At first glance it might appear that experimental philosophers and feminist philosophers would make good allies. Nonetheless, experimental philosophy has received criticism from feminist fronts, both for its methodology and for some of its guiding assumptions. Adding to this critical literature, I raise questions concerning the ways in which “differences” in intuitions are employed in experimental philosophy. Specifically, I distinguish between two ways in which differences in intuitions might p…Read more
  •  17
    Knowing (with) Others
    Social Philosophy Today 22 187-198. 2006.
    Feminist epistemologists and feminist philosophers of science have argued that our efforts to know the world are always situated, accompanied by such things as desires, beliefs, and interests that guide and shape what it is we discover and perhaps even what we can know. If this is the case, how is one to be receptive to that which is outside of the purview of one’s current understanding of the world? Some feminists have argued that in order to know more effectively and more broadly we need to ma…Read more
  •  58
    Diversity and Communication in Feminist Theory
    Social Philosophy Today 17 153-162. 2001.
    When diversity figures in ways that insulate women's differences from one another rather than theorizing about them together, it is difficult to see how interactionamong women that recognizes their differences is possible. In turn, the possibility of communication may seem inordinately difficult when taking place among diverse groups about their differences. While not denying these difficulties, I want to avoid approaches and practices that may draw us into a stalemate in considering possibiliti…Read more
  •  57
    Family Bonds (review)
    Teaching Philosophy 31 (2): 185-187. 2008.