Episode 92: Kristie Dotson discusses epistemic oppression
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What is epistemic oppression and why does it matter?
Hey, Matt Techman here from Elucidations. I just want to say thanks very much for all the iTunes reviews. They've been very helpful and please keep 'em coming. As always, you can find us on Twitter at Lucidations Podcast. And you can check out our blog at Lucian, that's L U C I A N Lucian dot usicago dot edu slash blogs slash elucidations. One other thing I wanted to mention is that since August we've been doing our hosting through a new startup called Pippa, which is pretty cool. It's actually founded by some former philosophers. And I have to say I've been very impressed so far. The service is totally free, provides detailed analytics, makes it very easy for you to migrate from your previous host to them.
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Hello and welcome to Elucidations, a philosophy podcast recorded at the University of Chicago. I'm Matt Tykman. And with me today is Christy Dotson, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University. And she is here to discuss epistemic oppression. Christy Dotson, welcome.
Well thank you, thank you for inviting me.
So this y you know, epistemic oppression. It's made of two words, epistemic and oppression. Oppression, we probably have some idea what that is. Epistemic, maybe we can begin with an explanation of uh of what exactly that means.
So I take epistemic to mean anything of or relating to knowledge. And you know what I mean by that is you can hear epistemic in front of a lot of things in, for example, a feminist epistemology talk. People talk about epistemic exploitation. Nora Barenstein at the University of Tennessee did a talk on this that's really very interesting and important that talks about the ways in which people can ask for folks to explain things over and over and over. again without really any kind of intention of learning it, but just expect people to explain and explain and explain that she's gonna call exploitive. But what's exploitive about it is that they keep trying to seep knowledge away from them. So she's gonna call it epistemic exploitation, right?
not because it's about a theory of knowledge per se, but because it seems to be related to whether or not I possess some bit of knowledge, right? And so there's um All different kinds of ways to employ uh deploy the term epistemic. When it seems as if whatever we're talking about is related to knowledge in some particular way, and maybe some theoretical way. Um, that's a term we tend to use. And I think it can be used in m narrow and wider senses, but I have a very wide sense, you know, anything of related to knowledge.
So you mentioned feminist epistemology and that's very interesting because I think well, you know, what's feminism? Uh I think we often think of that as it's something like the political struggle for women's rights and maybe equality of the sexes. And you might wonder what that has to do with assessing evidence and forming beliefs and coming to know things. Um aren't those kind of two separate like there's what a detective does and they try to figure out what happened. That's one set of issues. Right. And then there is like, oh, you know, women should have equal pay and that's another set of issues. So what is it that um people look at in feminist epistemology?
So that conception of feminism I think is one that usually people bring up when they think about feminism, but that's probably too narrow. It is the one that I think comes up in an intro to women's studies class. We're like, Well if you think that Women should get equal pay. You're a feminist. Well, you know, it actually it gets there's far more details to be uh to what it would mean to to be uh some of the ways in which it would mean to exist as a feminist. I'm not gonna say that's not a feminist position 'cause I you know, I think it is.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is epistemic oppression and why does it matter?
0:00–6:48
2
How does Kristie Dotson define “epistemic” and link it to oppression?
6:48–13:24
3
What are concrete examples of epistemic oppression in everyday life?
13:24–19:08
4
Why does the double‑bind situation make testimony about racism hard to believe?
19:08–27:59
5
How do feminist epistemology and Black feminist thought expose systemic knowledge gaps?
27:59–35:12
6
What role do social movements like Black Lives Matter play in combating epistemic oppression?
35:12–40:45
7
Which philosophical virtues or community structures might reduce epistemic oppression?
40:45–43:34
8
What future political or institutional changes could improve epistemic justice?
43:34–43:39
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Elucidations
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