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« Émergence insoumise s'ouvre sur un souvenir de l'autrice qui attend un taxi après un colloque : « Non, mais croyez-vous vraiment que moi, une femme des Premières Nations, je vais aller attendre seule le soir, à Val-d'Or? » Ces mots, adressés au gardien qui lui indique que les portes de l'université sont sur le point de fermer, seront le catalyseur d'une réflexion sur le sort réservé aux femmes autochtones, aussi bien dans le milieu carcéral que dans la société canadienne en général. Alternant entre les réminiscences personnelles et les analyses du racisme systémique afin d'aller au-delà des statistiques et des préjugés, cet essai de Cyndy Wylde s'inscrit dans une tradition de littérature de combat, qui bouscule les idées reçues et dynamite le confort et l'indifférence. »

Dans cet article, je présente la manière dont j’ai abordé, pour tenter de les atténuer, les risques découlant de ma prise de parole sur mon objet d’étude doctorale : l’oppression des femmes dans les minorités religieuses. Ces risques découlant de mon positionnement de féministe blanche occidentale, membre de la majorité libérale et laïque, et détentrice de nombreux privilèges associés à ces statuts, j’ai résolu de modifier symboliquement ce positionnement dans ma recherche. Pour ce faire, j’ai élaboré et appliqué une méthodologie réflexive dont l’un des aspects clés, présenté dans l’article, a été de (re)tourner mon regard critique vers moi.

In this article, I offer an account of an unjust epistemic practice―namely, epistemic appropriation―that harms marginalized knowers through the course of conceptual dissemination and intercommunal uptake. The harm of epistemic appropriation is twofold. First, while epistemic resources developed within the margins gain uptake with dominant audiences, those resources are overtly detached from the marginalized knowers responsible for their production. Second, epistemic resources developed within, but detached from, the margins are utilized in dominant discourses in ways that disproportionately benefit the powerful.

This paper will connect literature on epistemic injustice with literature on victims and perpetrators, to argue that in addition to considering the credibility deficit suffered by many victims, we should also consider the credibility excess accorded to many perpetrators. Epistemic injustice, as discussed by Miranda Fricker, considers ways in which someone might be wronged in their capacity as a knower. Testimonial injustice occurs when there is a credibility deficit as a result of identity-prejudicial stereotypes. However, criticisms of Fricker have pointed out that credibility is part of a more complex system that includes both deficits and excesses. I will use these points to argue that we should look closer at sources of credibility excess in cases of sexual assault. This means that in addition to considering sources of victim blaming by looking at ways in which “ideal” victims are constructed, we also need to consider ways in which “ideal” perpetrators are constructed.

Epistemic exploitation occurs when privileged persons compel marginalized persons to educate them about the nature of their oppression. I argue that epistemic exploitation is marked by unrecognized, uncompensated, emotionally taxing, coerced epistemic labor. The coercive and exploitative aspects of the phenomenon are exemplified by the unpaid nature of the educational labor and its associated opportunity costs, the double bind that marginalized persons must navigate when faced with the demand to educate, and the need for additional labor created by the default skepticism of the privileged. I explore the connections between epistemic exploitation and the two varieties of epistemic injustice that Fricker (2007) identifies, testimonial and hermeneutical injustice. I situate epistemic exploitation within Dotson’s (2012; 2014) framework of epistemic oppression, and I address the role that epistemic exploitation plays in maintaining active ignorance and upholding dominant epistemic frameworks.

Miranda Fricker maintains that testimonial injustice is a matter of credibility deficit, not excess. In this article, I argue that this restricted characterízation of testimonial injustice is too narrow. I introduce a type of identity-prejudicial credibility excess that harms its targets qua knowers and transmitters of knowledge. I show how positive stereotyping and prejudicially inflated credibility assessments contribute to the continued epistemic oppression of marginalized knowers. In particular, I examine harms such as typecasting, compulsory representation, and epistemic exploitation and consider what hearers are obligated to do in response to these injustices. I argue that because epistemic harms to rnarginatized knowers also arise from prejudicially inflated assessments of their credibility, the virtue of testimonial justice must be revised to remedy them.

La race fut longtemps appréhendée dans un sens biologique,approche qui constitue l'une des formes les plus puissantes de l'idéologie raciste. À la suite de la disqualification scientifique et politique de ces catégorisations biologiques, le racisme fut relégué au rang de simple préjugé. Ou, qu'en est-il de la production continuée de la race à l'ère prétendument "post-raciale" ? En mélangeant une approche féministe , attentive à une compréhension des rapports sociaux de sexe, et une approche postcoloniale , l'ouvrage analyse les conditions historiques et épistémologiques de la production de la race dans des sociétés qui se sont constituées - politiquement et économiquement - sur l'esclavage et la colonisation. Il montre que le racisme n'a pas disparu et a pris, au gré du renouvellement des formes de l'économie mondialisée, une nouvelle configuration qui oblige à nous interroger sur la supposée opposition entre un racisme biologique et un racisme dit culturel, qui aurait entériné l'inexistence des races biologiques, mais selon lequel il y aurait des différences culturelles irréductibles entre les peuples.

« La race n'est-elle qu'une chimère - une fiction collective aux effets pernicieux - ou est-elle un concept nécessaire à l'analyse et à l'éradication éventuelle du racisme et de ses conséquences? Cette catégorie ambiguë relève-t-elle de la biologie ou bien renvoie-t-elle à une réalité de nature socio-politique? Le racisme est-il d'abord un attribut des individus ou des institutions - un état mental fait de croyances et d'affects ou un système social? Toute discrimination raciale est-elle inévitablement raciste? Est-elle immorale et injuste même dans les cas où elle ne serait pas entièrement irrationnelle? Enfin, la discrimination positive est-elle justifiable? Telles sont quelques-unes des questions abordées dans ce recueil, qui propose une introduction au champ d'investigation que la race, le racisme et les discriminations constituent pour la philosophie - ici envisagée dans son articulation avec les sciences sociales. Il réunit dix textes majeurs, presque tous inédits en français. »

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 to the way in which situatedness and interdependence work in tandem, I develop an understanding of willful hermeneutical ignorance, which occurs when dominantly situated knowers refuse to acknowledge epistemic tools developed from the experienced world of those situated marginally. Such refusals allow dominantly situated knowers to misunderstand, misinterpret, and/or ignore whole parts of the world.

This paper defends a contextualist approach to epistemic injustice according to which instances of such injustice should be looked at as temporally extended phenomena (having developmental and historical trajectories) and socially extended phenomena (being rooted in patterns of social relations). Within this contextualist framework, credibility excesses appear as a form of undeserved epistemic privilege that is crucially relevant for matters of testimonial justice. While drawing on Miranda Fricker's proportional view of epistemic justice, I take issue with its lack of attention to the role that credibility excesses play in testimonial injustices. I depart from Fricker's view of the relation between credibility excesses and credibility deficits, and I offer an alternative account of the contributions that undeserved epistemic privileges make to epistemic injustices. Then, through the detailed analysis of To kill a mockingbird, I elucidate the crucial role played by the social imaginary in creating and sustaining epistemic injustices, developing an analysis of the kind of social blindness produced by an oppressive social imaginary that establishes unjust patterns of credibility excesses and deficits.

Les sociétés contemporaines deviennent de plus en plus des sociétés multiculturelles dans lesquelles les groupes minoritaires ethniques ou nationaux réclament une reconnaissance publique et les moyens de préserver leur identité culturelle. Une revendication qui n'est pas sans susciter des conflits qui menacent parfois l'unité territoriale des États. Pour Will Kymlicka, la réponse à cet enjeu devenu incontournable constitue aujourd'hui l'un des plus grands défis pour la démocratie. Son propos, dans ce livre devenu un classique de la théorie politique, est de défendre une nouvelle conception du statut et des droits des minorités culturelles.

This essay serves as both a response and embellishment of Marilyn Frye's now classic essay " Oppression." It is meant to pick up where this essay left off and to make connections between oppression, as Frye defines it, and the privileges that result from institutional structures. This essay tries to clarify one meaning of privilege that is lost in philosophical discussions of injustice. I develop a distinction between unearned privileges and earned advantages. Clarifying the meaning of privilege as unearned structural advantage makes visible the role white privilege plays in maintaining complex systems of domination such as racism, sexism, heterosexism and classism. Using a critical reading of both Frye and Young's accounts of oppression as a springboard, I develop a definition of privilege as a particular class of unearned advantages. -/- I distinguish my account of privilege from standard legal and philosophical definitions of privilege. The general distinction I make between privileges and advantages rests on three interrelated claims: that benefits granted by privilege are always unearned and conferred systemically to members of dominant social groups; that privileges granted to members of dominant groups solely on the basis of their membership in these groups is never justifiable; and, that privileges have an unconditional value that can be explained not only in terms of immunities, but also in terms of additional benefits