Addressing Microaggressions and Epistemic Injustice: Flourishing from the Work of Audre Lorde
Issue: Vol 24 No. 1 (2016)
Journal: Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism
Subject Areas: Philosophy
DOI: 10.1558/eph.31404
Abstract:
Microaggressions cause epistemic injustice and prevent human flourishing. As a step toward the recognition of microaggressions as sources of epistemic injustice and their remedy as a source for flourishing, I propose active engagement with narratives that present cases of microaggressions as they are contextualized in experience. The poet, essayist, and mythobiographer, Audre Lorde, provides contextualized narratives that express experiences of microaggressions from multiply intersectional and humanistic perspectives. Lorde’s work is an ideal source for actively engaging with experiences of microaggressions and epistemic injustice from a practical, humanist perspective. I argue that Lorde provides useful tools that assist in acknowledging, addressing, and remedying epistemic injustice. Her work suggests uses of anger through reconstruction and receptivity to difference that facilitate human flourishing.
Author: Mark Tschaepe
References :
Moraga, Cherríe and Gloria E. Anzaldúa. 1981. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. New York: Kitchen Table/Women of Color Press.
Applebaum, Barbara. 2016. “Needing Not to Know: Ignorance, Innocence, Denials, and Discourse.” Philosophy of Education Archive. 448–456.
Dewey, John. 1981–1990a. The Middle Works of John Dewey, 1899–1924, edited by J.A. Boydson. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
———. 1981–1990b. The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925–1953, edited by J.A. Boydson. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198237907.001.0001
Lorde, Audre. 2007 [1984]. Sister Outsider: Essays & Speeches. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press.
———. 1997. “A Litany for Survival.” The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde. 255–256. New York: W.W. Norton.
———. 1982. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. Berkeley: Crossing Press.
Medina, José. 2013. The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Radical Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199929023.001.0001
Mills, Charles W. 2007. “White Ignorance.” In Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, edited by Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana, 13-38. Albany: State of New York University Press.
Sue, Derald Wing. 2010. Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons.
Tschaepe, Mark. 2016. “HIV/AIDS and Discrimination.” In Expanding Our Calling: Social Ethics in Medical Education, edited by Wayne Shandera, 61–74. Hauppauge, NY: Nova.