Feature Articles

Mitigating Against Epistemic Injustice in Educational

Research
Jeff Frank1

In this article, I argue that Harvey Siegel correctly points out the limitations of epistemic diversity in educational research.
Building from Siegel’s analysis, I argue that we need to move away from the language of epistemic diversity and to the
language of epistemic injustice. Epistemic injustice allows us to do the work that epistemic diversity sets out to do—that
is, creating more inclusive epistemic practices that lead to more accurate descriptions of the world—without leading to
the untenable and unjustified conclusions that follow from using the language of epistemic diversity. Drawing on recent
work in feminist epistemology, I describe epistemic injustice and argue for its significance. I conclude by drawing out the
implications of epistemic injustice for educational researchers.

Keywords: diversity; feminist theory; philosophy; textual analysis

I
n “Epistemological Diversity and Education Research: Much Siegel’s Argument and Its Implications
Ado About Nothing Much?” Harvey Siegel (2006) argues
Siegel argues that epistemic diversity can mean—broadly—two
that “the call for epistemological diversity is not, where justi-
things. First, epistemic diversity can mean that there are multiple
fied, as radical or significant as it is often taken to be; and that,
ways of approaching the same problem. An individual who uses
where it is radical or significant, it is not justified” (p. 3). This
qualitative methods will approach a problem differently than an
argument can sound harsh and dismissive; Siegel’s tone—at
individual who uses mixed methods; a feminist researcher may
times—can give the impression that the motivation behind
approach a problem differently than a researcher who does not
epistemic diversity is insignificant: much ado about nothing
indentify as a feminist; and so on. Although each of these
much. I will argue that this impression is misleading. One can
researchers will approach the problem differently, they are all
criticize the call for epistemic diversity in education as unjusti-
investigating the same problem: Some of their approaches will be
fied or insignificant without thereby thinking that the motiva-
better suited to the problem than others, and some approaches
tion behind this call is unjustified or insignificant. Although it
will produce better data and more reliable results than others. A
may seem counterintuitive, accepting Siegel’s argument against
diversity of approaches to the problem are used, but there are
epistemic diversity may allow us to build a stronger defense of
ways of deciding which of the approaches better suit the problem,
what motivates arguments for epistemic diversity. But we can-
and there are ways of determining which approach provides the
not build this defense unless we can find a new language: a
most reliable, meaningful, illuminating, or truthful data. Siegel
language that remains responsive to the motivation to epistemic
argues that this understanding of epistemic diversity is justified
diversity without leading us into the problems—problems very
but it is not as radical or significant as proponents of epistemic
clearly described by Siegel—that follow from using the lan-
diversity think it is. Rather, this way of understanding epistemic
guage of epistemic diversity. In this article, I introduce the lan-
diversity can be understood as pluralism, an approach to episte-
guage of epistemic injustice and argue that epistemic injustice
mology that is already widely accepted.
allows us to do the work of creating more inclusive epistemic
The second way to understand epistemic diversity is that there
practices that lead to more accurate descriptions of the world.
are multiple epistemologies, and there is no way of adjudicating
Before describing epistemic injustice and making a case for its
between them: that is, if we don’t share an epistemology, then
significance as an alternative to the language of epistemic diver-
there is no way for us to determine—through discussion or argu-
sity, it is important to understand why someone who supports
mentation—what is the case. What is true for you is true for you,
a more inclusive vision of educational research should—even
though it may seem counterintuitive—accept Siegel’s criticisms
of epistemic diversity. 1Sweet Briar College, Sweet Briar, VA

Educational Researcher, Vol. 42 No. 7, pp. 363–370

DOI: 10.3102/0013189X12457812
© 2013 AERA. http://er.aera.net
October 2013 363
what is true for me is true for me; that is the end of the story. This
relativistic understanding of epistemic diversity, according to
Siegel, leads to the conclusion: “all research efforts are equally (il)
legitimate or that any approach to (or product of ) research is as
good as any other” (p. 4). When we reach this conclusion, it fol-
lows that “there would be no point in conducting research,
because any result would either be worthless or stand on an equal
epistemological footing with any alternative result” (p. 4). By
putting the matter this way, Siegel highlights how the relativistic
understanding of epistemic diversity—because it leads to these
types of untenable conclusions—is self-defeating and unjustified.
Here again I think Siegel is correct. Siegel notes that standpoint
theory, for example, is premised on the idea that perspectives
drawn from the margins of any given discourse are not only dif-
ferent from mainstream perspectives1 but they result in more
truthful representations of the world (p. 8). Elizabeth Anderson
(1995) makes this point clearly and forcefully in her discussion
of feminist epistemology. Feminist epistemology starts from dif-
ferent assumptions and holds different concerns than other
approaches to epistemology, but it ends by offering better—more
accurate, more insightful, more meaningful, truer—descriptions
of the world than its competitors. Although it is a different
approach to epistemology, it is not relativistic; its aim is to pres-
ent a picture of the world that can—and should—be accepted as
more accurate or more truthful than its alternatives.
In addition, we need to appreciate the political implications
of epistemic relativism.2 If we maintain a relativistic understand-
ing of epistemology, then it is difficult to see how widespread
political change is possible. For example, if we accept a relativistic
understanding of epistemology, then someone who has the power
to act on knowledge that runs counter to her beliefs or belief
system has no compelling reason to do so. But if knowledge gen-
erated by the researcher (who, for example, is marginally posi-
tioned in and by society) is true—not just true for the person or
people generating the knowledge but true regardless of where one
is positioned in society—then those with power would be unrea-
sonable to ignore or deny that truth. For example, if the experi-
ence of sexual harassment as experienced by the harassed—who
sees harassment as an insulting, dehumanizing, immoral act—
were true for her but not for her harasser—who sees harassment
as “boys being boys,” or “not a big deal” and so see its enforce-
ment as something like “political correctness gone awry”—then
it would be difficult to compel the harasser to see his actions as
unethical, because we would be unable to demonstrate that
harassment as experienced by the harassed is the true nature of
harassment. But if we establish the truth of harassment—the
truth as experienced more pressingly by the harassed, a truth gen-
erated from that reality—as true for all of us, then we can create
and enforce policies aimed at eradicating sexual harassment
(Fricker, 2007, p. 149 ff.). In order to bring about meaningful
political change, we need to embrace pluralism and not relativism
in epistemology (Fricker, 2000).
The true nature of harassment—the truth generated by indi-
viduals who experience harassment, but a truth that everyone
should accept as true—is slowly gaining acceptance as the truth.
Nonetheless, it continues to be easily downplayed, especially by
the harassers, or those who enable harassment by excusing it; by
downplaying the true nature of harassment’s harm. Here is where
364 EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER
I can very clearly see the motivation behind the more radical—if
unjustified—form of epistemic diversity criticized by Siegel.
Proponents of sexual harassment laws, for example, often find
themselves wondering: How can anyone think that an unwanted
sexual advance—especially in an asymmetrical power relation
(like that of boss and subordinate or teacher and student)—is
anything but offensive and unethical? When proponents of sex-
ual harassment laws and their critics continue to find themselves
at odds over a question as basic as this, it can seem like these
groups of individuals do not share the same world. As such, it
makes sense that someone in this situation might claim: “We
know the truth of harassment; if no one else can accept it, at least
we know that it is true for us.” This type of reasoning leads to the
problematic relativist position described above, but it is impor-
tant to see the motivation behind it. Proponents of sexual harass-
ment laws know they have discovered the truth of our social
world, but because of resistance to this truth, it is understandable
why they might make relativistic claims. Still, this relativist posi-
tion—though understandable—is epistemologically unjustified
and politically ineffective. As such, we need to find another way
out of the impasse: Instead of reverting back to relativism in the
face of challenges from individuals and groups who do not accept
the truth of, for example, sexual harassment, we need to more
effectively understand the reasons behind dismissals of harass-
ment as a step to creating strategies that more adequately address
this dismissal in epistemologically justified and politically effec-
tive ways.
It is important to develop an understanding of why the truth
of harassment continues to be dismissed.3 Two main reasons
come to mind. First, I think it is the case that truth established
outside of the mainstream has a harder time gaining a serious
hearing as the truth. Even though the true nature of harassment
has been established—in scholarship and in practice—as the
truth, because this truth originated outside of the mainstream,
and because many important developments in sexual harass-
ment thinking continue to occur outside of mainstream chan-
nels, there appears to be a resistance to this truth. Because
feminism and feminist epistemology allowed the truth of harass-
ment to develop and gain the status it has today, it is possible to
discredit this truth as biased—or less than true—because of its
birth in epistemological practices that readily acknowledge val-
ues and commitments that are not shared by other, more seem-
ingly value-neutral approaches to epistemology. Even though we
should accept Siegel’s criticism of epistemic diversity, we need to
appreciate that researchers who use methodologies that deviate
most from mainstream epistemological practices have the most
difficult time getting a fair hearing. Even though these method-
ologies offer viable descriptions of the world that we share in
common, it remains far too easy to dismiss these methodologies
and the results generated from these methodologies without giv-
ing them serious consideration. If we cannot even hear these new
types of truth, it is impossible to see how they can ever be given
anything like the neutral evaluation defended by Siegel and
required by pluralism.4 They deserve this type of evaluation, but
it is important to acknowledge that this type of evaluative frame-
work does not exist yet. As such, we need to find a way of
addressing this type of epistemic silencing in order to create
more robust epistemic practices.
 Second, in addition to a general distrust of a truth developed
outside of the mainstream, claims for truth that are clearly marked
by their outsider status—in language, style of argumentation, and
concerns—can feel threatening. For example, arguments for
“White privilege” or “heteronormativity”—if accepted as true—
would have far-reaching implications. If we take seriously the idea
that epistemic, ethical, and political practices are marked by
White privilege or heteronormativity, and if an individual is cur-
rently positioned to benefit from these practices, we may want to
wonder: Can an individual so positioned fairly and impartially
judge these arguments when if she accepts them as true she could
lose her status and the benefits that follow from it? In a sense, this
question can only be answered case by case. But in general, I think
we should be troubled by this line of questioning if we are inter-
ested in the type of pluralism in epistemology Siegel advocates.
We should wonder: If my work is being published in leading edu-
cational journals, for example, and a group of scholars in my field
claim that those leading journals are biased—in the types of meth-
ods they deem legitimate, the types of concerns and styles of writ-
ing they deem appropriate—will I be able to understand and
impartially evaluate this type of criticism? I would like to believe
that we can, but achieving this impartiality will involve a very
great deal of effort. As literature in teacher education illustrates,
future teachers resist acknowledging the truth of their privilege
and its multiple effects (Cochran-Smith, 2003; Delpit, 1995;
Ladson-Billings, 1994, 1995; Tatum, 1992, 1994, 1997; Villegas
& Lucas, 2002). I don’t see why future researchers would be any
less resistant. To realize pluralism in educational research, it is
important to address this resistance; we need to understand the
potential for conflicts between truth and privilege, and see the
difficulty of accepting a truth that destabilizes our status and
threatens the benefits that follows from that status.
Fear of losing privilege and distrust of truth established out-
side of the mainstream are two reasons why we should worry that
we can dismiss the truth of an argument before we give it a fair
hearing. If we worry about this—if we worry that achieving the
neutrality advocated for by Siegel cannot happen if we don’t sig-
nificantly rethink the way that educational researchers are edu-
cated—then I think we can also see the need for a new way of
understanding epistemology that allows us to create more inclu-
sive epistemological practices that are not subject to the episte-
mological and political limitations associated with epistemic
diversity. In order to create this understanding, we need to move
away from the language of epistemic diversity and to the language
of epistemic injustice. By bringing injustice to the fore, I mean to
stress that accepting pluralism does not mean that issues related
to privilege or issues related to difficulties of understanding and
evaluating methodologies positioned outside of the mainstream
are unimportant. Rather, stressing injustice in epistemology
reminds us that we cannot get an accurate picture of our world if
we cannot hear the arguments of individuals who argue differ-
ently than we do, or who emphasize different aspects of the world
as salient, or who question whether the authority we have estab-
lished for ourselves is due to unearned privilege or to the truthful-
ness of our arguments. We will never be able to do any of these
things—and so consign ourselves to an inaccurate and distorted
understanding of our shared world—unless we appreciate epis-
temic injustice and the role that it plays in our own thinking.
Epistemic Injustice and Educational Research
Where one is positioned within culture is epistemically signifi-
cant. As Miranda Fricker (2012) argues,
If we want to achieve a full understanding of a human practice,
social phenomenon, or pattern of relationships, then we must
take up the point of view of those on the losing end. If you are the
one doing the crushing . . . then not only are you not in a position
to know what it is like to be crushed, but also—and this is a
separate point—your general picture of the social world in which
such crushings take place will be in an unhelpfully partial per-
spective, the perspective of the powerful. (p. 288)
Fricker makes two points here. First, an individual or a group of
individuals positioned on the disempowered end of a social sys-
tem will often have different perspectives on that system than
those positioned with power in the system. Second, the perspec-
tives of those on the disempowered end of the social spectrum
are often invisible to those with power. Because those with power
cannot see the existence of the perspectives of the disempowered,
they have an unhelpfully partial view of the social world they live
in. Nonetheless, those with power often determine what per-
spectives are important and worth listening to. If the perspec-
tives of those positioned without power in our social world go
unheard, then our collective epistemic resources are less robust
than they otherwise would be. This situation is one of epistemic
injustice. Those without power are silenced and this leads to an
incomplete and inaccurate vision of the social world. One of the
main benefits of using the language of epistemic injustice—as
opposed to remaining with the language of epistemic diversity—
is that we are able to articulate why everyone—even, or espe-
cially, those positioned with power in the social world as it is
currently configured—should take a diversity of voices seriously.
We silence large segments of the community of knowers of
which we are all a part at our own peril. The truth of our social
world will elude us until we learn what it means to hear across
the social spectrum.5
In Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing, Fricker
(2007) argues that our epistemic practices lead to silencing, and
she illustrates how this type of silence causes us to lose epistemic
resources that can provide us with a more truthful picture of our
social world than we currently have. In particular, Fricker is con-
cerned with the practice of testimony and she is concerned with
how knowledge is generated and validated. In the first case—
what Fricker labels testimonial injustice—an individual is treated
unethically in her capacity as a knower. In the second case—what
Fricker labels hermeneutical injustice—an individual experiences
“the injustice of having some significant area of one’s social expe-
rience obscured from collective understanding owing to herme-
neutical marginalization” (p. 158).
Testimonial Injustice
Testimonial injustice requires less discussion than hermeneutical
injustice. I believe we are familiar with a number of cases where
an individual can convey relevant information to someone with
the power or authority to act on that information, but the infor-
mation is ignored owing to how the conveyor of knowledge is
perceived. For example, we can all recall cases where knowers are
October 2013 365
perceived as less competent than they are based on their accent,
their race, their gender, their age, and so forth. Because of testi-
monial injustice, an individual goes unheard—damaging her
status as a competent knower—and we are unable to accurately
judge the veracity of her testimony because she is prematurely
silenced. By denying ourselves access to this information, we
limit—if not make impossible—the possibility of finding the
truth. We should be very concerned about testimonial injustice
because it harms the individuals who are silenced, and it harms
society by limiting our epistemic resources. What strikes me as
particularly challenging about testimonial injustice is how diffi-
cult it is to mitigate against. In order to work against testimonial
injustice, we must acknowledge that we have an image in our
mind of who a competent knower is, and we must also acknowl-
edge that this image can lead us astray. The paradigmatic image
of a knower will generally be highly educated; “White, male,
middle class, heterosexual, able-bodied, and, more generally,
privileged” (to use Siegel’s phrasing); and speak Standard English.
This list is not meant to be exhaustive; it is meant to illustrate
that knowers who fit the paradigm tend to be given credibility
(causing us to be too trusting in some cases), whereas individuals
who don’t are often given less credibility than they deserve. If we
take testimonial injustice seriously as a potential wrong, then I
think there at least two major implications for education.
The first implication is that in the process of learning to
become an educational researcher, discussions of testimonial
injustice should play some role. Although many qualitative
researchers are already aware of the difficulties of listening, and
can appreciate how a researcher’s subjectivity can keep her from
attending to the truth of what a participant is expressing, the
significance of testimonial injustice extends beyond the imme-
diacy of interviews, focus groups, and observations. In addition
to wondering how well we are listening, we have to consider the
representativeness of who we are listening to; we need to ask: Am
I listening to the group of people who know this situation best,
or am I selecting a sample based on how closely it resembles what
I take to be the image of the paradigmatic knower? As well, testi-
monial injustice reminds us that certain knowers are used to hav-
ing their credibility discounted prematurely. Expecting that their
testimony will be misheard, misconstrued, or discounted, they
choose not to speak or to speak in ways that intentionally mislead
the researcher (Dotson, 2011). Again, this type of point is recog-
nized by many qualitative researchers, but the implications of a
point like this extend beyond the training of qualitative research-
ers. Educational researchers—in general—need to worry about
the quality of data generated from individuals who have their
credibility as knowers discounted on a regular basis. Although
individuals who participate in research studies may give us the
information they think we are capable of hearing, how can we
make it so that research participants share the difficult truths that
they don’t think we are capable of hearing? Unless we understand
the full extent of this problem—there are large numbers of indi-
viduals who feel as if the truth of their experience is something
that very few people can understand, or care to understand—we
will continue to act as if our picture of the social world is more
inclusive than it actually is. If we are worried that we aren’t get-
ting the best data possible in education—both because we haven’t
learned to listen beyond our image of the paradigmatic knower
366 EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER
and because individuals who have seen their credibility ques-
tioned because they don’t fit that image can be resistant to speak-
ing truths when they don’t trust that these truths will be
understood—then we can see that big changes are called for in
graduate education. We need researchers to understand the dif-
ficulties of listening, and we need to create an environment where
research participants trust that they will be heard.
The second implication revolves around how doctoral
students engage with existing research in the field. In addition
to questioning the data, as discussed above, researchers should
seriously consider how they understand—and judge—quality as
it relates to published educational research. Graduate students
should know how the practice of peer review works and be able
to articulate its strengths and weaknesses. Journal editors do their
best to ensure that every paper submitted to a journal receives a
fair and unbiased hearing. But journal editors have to work with
what they have: a preexisting editorial board and the reviewers
who agree to review a paper. If a journal editor of a highly
regarded or highly ranked journal receives a paper using a meth-
odology she is unfamiliar with, and if this methodology has not
been published in the journal before, then it is possible that the
editor may determine that the paper is not a good fit for the
journal and reject the paper before it is reviewed externally. If this
is the way the journal operates, then it is difficult to see how new
methodologies will find their way into that highly ranked and
highly regarded journal. Second, even if this hypothetical journal
editor decides to send the paper out for review, if she is not famil-
iar with the methodology, and if the journal has not published
work using that methodology, then it is likely that it will be hard
for that journal editor to find good reviewers for the paper. The
editor will have to rely on her best judgment for finding review-
ers, and then she will have to do her best to determine if the
reviewers are fair and accurate. In some cases, the review process
will work adequately, but it is reasonable to believe that strong
pieces are rejected simply because the editor has an understand-
ably difficult time managing the review process. Because of this,
strong papers can end up being published in lower ranked or less
highly regarded journals. If this is the case, then future educa-
tional researchers need to be aware that the top journals in the
field are not the only place to look for excellent educational
research. This is not a relativistic point; it is a very practical one.
Compounding this practical difficulty is the potential of
reviewer bias. Again, I don’t think wholesale skepticism or relativ-
ism is called for when considering the peer review process, but it
is important to consider the difficulties an author faces when she
chooses to write in a way that is clearly marked—in language,
style of argumentation, and concerns—as outside of the main-
stream of work published in the journal she is submitting to or
the field she is working in. We have to acknowledge that work
like this has a hard time getting published, as it very clearly is not
a “good fit” for the journal as it is currently configured. Moreover,
when an author writes in this way—a way that clearly marks the
paper as outside of the mainstream—then we have to wonder if
this type of writing will lead reviewers and editors to withhold
judgments of credibility based on the image of a competent
knower discussed above.
A clear retort to this line of thinking is that authors, if they
want to be published, should conform to the ideals of the practice
of journal reviewing and publishing as it currently stands.
Although this is sound pragmatic advice, if followed, it would
lead to significantly less epistemic diversity in the field than if it
were resisted. In addition, although I believe that it is important
to establish points of connection with work that is already pub-
lished, and although it is important to be responsive to work that
is already published, making conformity to the language, style of
argumentation and concerns of the field as it is currently config-
ured a condition for publication strikes me as deeply misguided.
Not because epistemic diversity is in itself a good, but because
many of the problems that continue to concern educational
researchers—the academic performance gap; the segregation,
desegregation, and resegregation of schools; widespread sexual
harassment in schools—are, as I see it, particularly amenable to
new and diverse methods. One clear—if possibly overly used—
example of this comes to mind. When W. E. B. Du Bois (1903)
was working on The Souls of Black Folk, the language of sociology
was dominated by the voice of the “car-window sociologist.”
Although these sociologists “gleefully count his bastards and his
prostitutes, the very soul of the toiling, sweating black man is
darkened by the shadow of a vast despair.” In order to present a
more truthful picture of what it means to be Black in America,
Du Bois created a work that expands what it means to write soci-
ology. Although he employed many of the traditional methods of
sociology, he also used fiction, mythology, autobiography, poetry,
and song. By using a diversity of methods, Du Bois was able to
create a more truthful vision of Black experience in America than
existed in print before he wrote. When undertaking our work as
reviewers and readers of journals, we have to wonder how the
car-window sociologist felt when reading Du Bois, and we have
to ask ourselves if we are falling into habits of mind that lead us
to automatically reject new types of work using new and different
methodologies as a nonfit, or if we discount a work’s credibility
because it doesn’t conform to our vision of the type of work a
competent knower produces.
To conclude, if testimonial injustice is a real issue, then how
we gather and interpret data collected from privileged knowers
and knowers used to having their testimony discounted will need
to be made an object of serious consideration. As well, how we
understand quality—of journals and of individual papers—will
also need to be reconsidered. Although a wholesale rejection of
the peer review process is ill advised, it is important for future
educational researchers to know how the process works, and how
the process can cause excellent work to be published in journals
that may not be the most highly regarded in the field. This will
lead a future researcher to be better able to assess the quality of
work across the spectrum of published work in our field, while
also giving her opportunities to think about the work she will
need to do in order to become the type of peer reviewer who can
provide a “fair-minded, non-question-begging evaluation”6 of
work that uses methodologies different from her own, and work
that seems, at first glance, to be a nonfit for the journal she is
reviewing for.
Hermeneutical Injustice
In the case of testimonial injustice, a knower is treated unjustly
because another individual, or group of individuals, discounts
her capacity to convey truthful and accurate testimony because
of the knower’s race, gender, accent, etc. Hermeneutical injustice
is different because it doesn’t involve—in such a clear and direct
way—culpability for silencing, and discrediting, another person
in her capacity as a knower. Rather, hermeneutical injustice arises
when an individual cannot make sense of her experience because
of a lack of available collective epistemic resources. A striking
example of hermeneutical injustice, for Fricker (2006, 2007), is
sexual harassment. Fricker describes how the concept of sexual
harassment developed. Carmita Wood, who worked at Cornell
University as a departmental assistant, worked for a senior faculty
member in the department who, as Wood told the story, “would
jiggle his crotch when he stood near her desk and looked at his
mail, or he’d deliberately brush against her breasts while reaching
for some papers. One night as the lab workers were leaving their
annual Christmas party, he cornered her in the elevator and
planted some unwanted kisses on her mouth” (Fricker, 2006, p.
96, citing Brownmiller). Wood tried to avoid the faculty mem-
ber, experienced medical symptoms that made her work difficult,
requested a transfer to another department, and when the request
was denied, she quit. When she applied for unemployment insur-
ance, “the claims investigator asked why she had left her job after
eight years, Wood was at a loss to describe the hateful episodes.
She was ashamed and embarrassed. Under prodding—the blank
on the form needed to be filled in—she answered that her reasons
had been personal. Her claim for unemployment benefits was
denied” (ibid.). Only after Wood began speaking with a group of
other women with similar experiences—as part of the process of
working with feminist lawyers who were appealing her insurance
claim—did she realize how to describe her reason for leaving her
job: She had been sexually harassed.
Before Wood had a language for her experience, she suffered
a tremendous epistemic and ethical disadvantage. Because the
language of harassment was not available, Wood was unable to
make adequate sense of her experience—causing a gap in her
capacity as a self-knower—and she was unable to speak in a way
that would illicit just treatment from others: from the individual
causing the harassment to the organization that denied her
unemployment insurance. Hermeneutical injustice arises when
an individual is unable to make adequate sense of her experience
because of a lack of socially available epistemic resources; unable
to make full sense of her experience, she is at a disadvantage when
she attempts to seek redress for wrongs that she experiences. An
important component of Fricker’s analysis is the idea of herme-
neutical marginalization. A poet struggling to find the right way
to describe the way she feels about the loss of a childhood friend
she didn’t maintain close ties with can be frustrating, but it is not
an injustice. To qualify as a case of epistemic injustice, the know-
er’s access to epistemic resources has to be limited because of
where she is positioned in society, or because of society’s lack of
concern with the experience she is attempting to articulate. To
make this point, Fricker argues that an individual can be, in gen-
eral, epistemically privileged, but he can experience moments of
hermeneutical injustice. She illustrates this through the example
of Ian McEwan’s novel Enduring Love. In the novel, Joe, the main
character, is stalked by another man. When Joe tries to articulate
his concerns to the police, he is not taken seriously. Joe’s concern
as a man being stalked by another man is underconceptualized in
his society, and because of this, he is not able to make others see
October 2013 367
the harm he is enduring and so cannot seek adequate redress. To preemptively dismissed, because, attuned to what is not immedi-
qualify as a case of epistemic injustice, the individual knower is ately present within the experienced world of the dominantly
left unable to have his or her experience make sense—or be taken situated knower, such resources can appear to the dominantly
seriously—by other knowers because of a general social lack of situated knower to attend to nothing at all, or to make something
out of nothing. (p. 8)
concern for that type of experience.
The implications of this form of injustice are more difficult to
If you don’t experience the world as a place where you can be
draw out than in the case of testimonial injustice, because the
demeaned—overtly and through microaggressions—in multiple
injustice is not clearly perpetuated by any single individual. If
ways each day, it is easy to dismiss the truth of arguments that
society, in general, is not concerned with finding ways to express
draw attention to demeaning behaviors; behaviors that, to you,
the harm of sexual harassment, how is individual responsibility
don’t seem all that harmful or demeaning (if they even appear on
possible?7 In the case of harassment, we would like to be able to
the radar at all). Instead of taking the time to see what it would
blame the individual harasser: he should, even in absence of the
mean for these types of arguments to make sense, they are pre-
concept of sexual harassment, know better. We might think the
emptively dismissed because they fail to speak to what is “imme-
same way when it comes to how the police treated Joe. Even
diately present within the experienced world of the dominantly
though Joe’s concerns may be different from the types of concerns
situated knower.” Although there is an understandable side to
they normally hear, the police should nonetheless be more con-
this ignorance—it is difficult to appreciate and assess aspects of
cerned than they are. In a way, Fricker acknowledges that these
the world that you are not used to attending to—this under-
individuals should know better. She argues that as individuals we
standable difficulty is not exculpating. In fact, the difficulty of
can create micro-climates of hermeneutical justice by showing a
attending to aspects of the world that we are not used to seeing is
willingness to listen and engage in dialogue that helps an indi-
often hard to disentangle from an active attempt to not see any-
vidual attempt to make sense of her experience with us (Fricker,
thing that challenges our sense of the world. For example, a
2007, pp. 169-175). Instead of dismissing the concerns of an
White man’s fear that accepting the truth of “White privilege”
individual struggling to make sense of her experience, we help the
could have, as it were, a cascading effect: toppling false beliefs
individual develop ways of understanding her experience that are
that force him to reconsider everything from the meaning of
shareable with others and that can be used to motivate social
words and ideas previous taken as obvious—like work, hard
change. Although there is a lot to commend this view—it
work, success, reward, opportunity, a good school—to areas he
acknowledges the power of social norms, while allowing for the
never gave any serious thought—like the connection between
possibility that individuals can resist and change those norms—
chattel slavery and current social arrangements; the costs of col-
Fricker’s view of hermeneutical injustice has recently been criti-
orblind policies and ways of thinking; the effects and significance
cized for (a) discounting the epistemic resources created
of things like White flight. Because his epistemic worldview
by individuals who experience an injustice and (b) failing to
seems to work well enough as it is, it is easy to see why fear of
account for the significance of individuals who willfully refuse to
new ways of thinking might lead to a willful ignorance of them.
accept the validity of epistemic resources developed by the indi-
Pohlhaus puts it this way: “When a group with material power
viduals experiencing injustice (see Dotson, 2011; Mason, 2011;
is vested in ignoring certain parts of the world, they can, there-
Pohlhaus, in press).
fore, maintain their ignorance by refusing to recognize and by
Pohlhaus (in press) most forcefully illustrates these important
actively undermining any newly generated epistemic resource
limitations of Fricker’s conceptualization of hermeneutical injus-
that attends to those parts of the world that they are vested in
tice by introducing willful hermeneutical ignorance: “willful her-
ignoring” (p. 14). By drawing our attention to willful epistemic
meneutical ignorance describes instances where marginally
ignorance, Pohlhaus shows that individuals have the power to
situated knowers actively resist epistemic domination through
block the circulation and validation of truthful arguments that
interaction with other resistant knowers, while dominantly situ-
are in what they take to be their best interest to block. When
ated knowers nonetheless continue to misunderstand and misin-
Fricker recounts the birth of the concept of sexual harassment,
terpret the world” (p. 2). The truth of sexual harassment is
she seems to suggest that everyone is harmed—though certainly
established by marginalized knowers, and the creation of this type
not equally harmed—without the concept of sexual harassment.
of epistemic resource is ongoing. As such, Pohlhaus doesn’t
Men who would have acted better had they known the fuller
believe that marginalized knowers are at a disadvantage in their
meaning of their conduct are not given the opportunity to cor-
ability to generate truthful arguments aimed at making sense of
rect themselves, and society, as a whole, is at a loss without
their experience. Where marginalized knowers are disadvantaged
resources that provide a more truthful, more just picture of itself.
is in their ability to have these arguments taken seriously. These
Pohlhaus suggests that this account fails to take seriously how
arguments are difficult to take seriously, because they speak to
vested individuals are in maintaining ignorance and that main-
aspects of the world that are more apparent to those who lack
taining ignorance, for these individuals, can be more important
power than those who have it. Pohlhaus sees this happen
than truth or justice. As such, an important implication of
when those situated dominantly dismiss the viability of such Pohlhaus’s critical expansion of hermeneutical injustice is to show
arduously honed concepts like “white privilege,” “date rape,” that achieving the type of evaluative judgments that will allow for
or “heteronormativity.” These epistemic resources, which could a more truthful picture of the social world involves an acknowl-
(and sometimes do) help dominantly situated knowers to edgment of the role that willful hermeneutical ignorance plays in
know the world in light of marginalized situatedness, can be our epistemic practices.

368 EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER

 One main implication of willful hermeneutical ignorance in
doctoral education is that researchers need to see how their posi-
tion in society can influence what they are capable of seeing—or
willing to see—as valuable and useful. When students are pre-
sented with resources that are developed by individuals who do
not share the researcher’s background or position in society, the
students cannot assume that they can immediately adequately
judge those resources; they need to understand that nonepistemic
factors, like their social privilege, have the power to undermine
their ability to accurately determine the value and utility of these
types of resources. On a more positive note, willful hermeneutical
injustice reminds us that new resources are being generated by
individuals-in-communities (Grasswick, 2004) outside of the
mainstream epistemic channels and that these resources have the
power to paint a more truthful picture of our social world. As
Pouhlaus writes,
When one genuinely cares to know something about the world
as experienced from social positions other than one’s own, one
must use epistemic resources suited to (and developed from)
those situations. Prerequisites for acquiring such resources are,
first, to allow the resources to be well developed by persons situ-
ated in them; second, to trust those persons to have developed
them well; and third, to take an interest in learning to use those
resources. Or course, where one stands in relation to others may
influence whether one does or does not decide to take such an
interest, a decision that reveals one’s moral and epistemic char-
acter. (p. 17)
Can the process of learning to become an educational researcher
include more opportunities to support the development of
resources within communities outside of the academy; can it
teach future researchers to trust the individuals developing these
resources, even if they work outside of the academy; can it teach
future researchers to take a serious interest in learning what it
might mean to use those resources? If we see epistemic injustice
as a threat that can keep us from ever achieving a true picture of
our social world, then we might be able to seriously engage with
these types of questions and, in the process, rethink how educa-
tional researchers are educated.8
Conclusions
If we are going to create educational research that is responsive to
the concerns of individuals outside of schools of education, we
need to learn what it means to hear those concerns. Part of this
will involve acknowledging the impact of testimonial injustice in
our knowledge-sharing practices, while another part will involve
trusting that individuals are already creating epistemic resources
that are responsive to their own concerns. Knowers situated out-
side of the academy have access to experiences that we don’t have,
and have developed resources that we don’t know how to under-
stand and don’t know how to use. The existence of these experi-
ences and these resources can serve as an opportunity to learn
more about our social world, and in the process we can come to
wonder how much of the social world we are unable to see,
understand, and evaluate. Learning to become an educational
researcher should help us see these types of limits, and it should
give us the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to learn how we
might grow through them.
Epistemic injustice offers a better framework for doing this
type of work than epistemic diversity does. This is so for at least
two reasons. First, epistemic injustice takes seriously what moti-
vates the call for epistemic diversity without leading to the unjus-
tified epistemological conclusions highlighted by Siegel. Second,
epistemic injustice refocuses our attention on the importance
of reforming our shared epistemic practices so that we can pro-
duce the most accurate picture of the social world that we
are capable of creating. If we maintain a relativistic understand-
ing of epistemology—what is true for you is true for you, what
is true for me is true for me—then it is hard to make the case that
transformative learning experiences are necessary. But if we can
see that others might be better able to speak to the truth of our
shared experience than we are, then we are in a better position to
start doing the difficult work of learning what is true, even if this
means coming to terms with the privilege-induced vision we use
to filter experience through. If we can do this, then we might
achieve the neutrality demanded by epistemology; if not, our
best attempts to achieve the truth will be stymied by epistemic
injustice.
Notes
1This term is difficult to define, because it is broad and can mean
different things that are nonetheless related closely enough to merit
using the same term. One sense of mainstream is what is generally
accepted as excellent. For example, work published in certain journals—
Teachers College Record, Harvard Educational Review, the AERA
journals—is generally regarded as excellent. Using this understanding of
the term, an article published in a top journal—as measured, e.g., by the
various journal-ranking metrics (ISI, Eigenfactor)—will generally be
considered more mainstream than a paper published in a less highly
ranked journal. A related point; these top journals often publish—or
give the impression of publishing—a certain type of work: work that
employs similar methodologies or shares a similar sense of what prob-
lems in education are important. Authors who use different methodolo-
gies than those used in these journals or authors who focus on different
problems than those focused on in these journals are often considered
farther outside of the mainstream. Finally, some researchers—even
researchers who publish in top journals, even authors on the editorial
boards of top journals—consider themselves as outside of the main-
stream given the methods they use, the problems they consider impor-
tant, the style with which they write. I will use the term mainstream to
encompass all of these senses. While this may be confusing, I think it is
an accurate use of the term.
2This is a point that Siegel doesn’t make explicitly in the paper under
consideration here, but it is a point he has addressed elsewhere (Siegel,
1997, especially chapters 8 and 9.)
3If we need evidence of this, we can look at the troubling series of
papers written on harassment by the American Association of University
Women (AAUW, 2011, 2001) or any of the countless studies on harass-
ment (Brown, Chesney-Lind & Stein, 2007; Gruber & Fineran, 2008;
Lee, Croninger, Linn & Chen, 1996; Stein & Mennemeier, 2011;
Meyer, 2009). As these studies show, harassment is recognized as an
illegal and unethical act in schools, but the culture of schools routinely
denies and ignores its existence: this, despite the overwhelming evidence
of its near ubiquity in most school settings.
4Siegel knows that neutrality is a charged term, and so makes it clear
that he defines neutrality as a “fair-minded, non-question-begging eval-
uation of the issue, or epistemology, in question” (p. 7). This is the way
I use the term, and though the term remains a charged one, I believe it
is defensible and worthy of our aspiration.
October 2013 369
 5It is worth stressing a point made in the introduction. The motiva-
tion behind diversity is epistemology is justified, but if our understand-
ing of diversity in education leads us to the conclusion that there is no
way to evaluate and judge different epistemologies, and so determine
which perspective—or combination of perspectives—offers the most
truthful or accurate picture of our social world, then we are left con-
signed to our own limited vision of the world. But, if we use the language
of injustice, then we are given a resource that allows us to make the case
that failing to listen to a diversity of voices on a given issue will lead to a
limited and less truthful vision of the world. If we care about the truth
and accuracy of our work, then we will need to be sure that our epistemic
practices are as inclusive as they can reasonably expected to be. And it
will also make us hesitant to presume a complete picture of our social
world if we feel that we are not confident that we have heard everything
that needs to be heard on any given issue.
6Siegel’s (2006) definition of neutrality (pp. 7-8).
7For a closely related discussion—one that is fully centered in ethics
and not the intersections of ethics and epistemology—see Calhoun
(1989).
8A clear example of this is illustrated by Elizabeth Anderson’s (2006)
discussion of how privileging certain ways of knowing over others can
cause us to limit our knowledge of the world. She discusses how forestry
groups in South Asia built policies regulating the collection of firewood
without taking into account the perspective of women. Because women
were primarily responsible for collecting firewood, they generated epis-
temic resources from and for this practice. Unfortunately, the policy-
makers did not take this knowledge into account, causing the women’s
daily firewood collecting time to increase from one to two hours a day
up to four to five hours a day. Ignoring epistemic resources already in
existence lead to a distorted picture of the practice of firewood collec-
tion. Instead of using the resources at hand, forestry groups ignored
these resources and created policies that did not work.
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AUTHOR
JEFF FRANK is an assistant professor at Sweet Briar College, Education
Department, PO Box 94, Sweet Briar, Virginia 24595; jfrank@sbc.edu.
His interests focus on inclusive education and American philosophies of
education, with an emphasis on African American thought.
Manuscript received February 13, 2012
Revisions received May 9, 2012; and July 7, 2012
Accepted July 19, 2012