Epistemic Injustice, Ignorance, and Trans Experiences

Abstract

Hermeneutical injustice is the injustice of being frustrated in an attempt to render a significant social experience intelligible where hermeneutical marginalization is a significant causal factor in that failure. Someone counts as hermeneutically marginalized insofar as they belong to a social group that under-contributes to the common pool of concepts and social meanings. Trans people report experiences that are surely ones of testimonial injustice. Pre-emptive testimonial injustice is effectively an advance credibility deficit sufficient to ensure that one&s;s word is not even solicited. The testimonial injustices of various kinds suffered by trans people offer a particularly stark illustration of the connection between testimonial injustice and hermeneutical marginalization. Hermeneutical marginalization is the key condition for hermeneutical injustice, which will occur with any failed or frustrated attempt at intelligibility that is significantly due to the marginalization. Remedying hermeneutical injustice often begins by developing an operative concept that is used by a particular community to fill the hermeneutical lacuna.