Hostname: page-component-5cf477f64f-r2nwp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-05T08:32:20.761Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Gaslighting and Echoing, or Why Collective Epistemic Resistance is not a “Witch Hunt”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2020

Gaile Pohlhaus Jr.
Gaile Pohlhaus Jr.*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 45056
*
Corresponding author. Email. [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay reflects on some of the problems with characterizing collective epistemic resistance to oppression as “unthinking” or antithetical to reason by highlighting the epistemic labor involved in contending with and resisting epistemic oppression. To do so, I develop a structural notion of epistemic gaslighting in order to highlight structural features of contexts within which collective epistemic resistance to oppression occurs. I consider two different forms of epistemic echoing as modes of contending with and resisting epistemic oppression that are sometimes mischaracterized as “unthinking” or “group think.” The first sense highlights the epistemic labor entailed in withdrawing from conditions of structural epistemic gaslighting that is sometimes mischaracterized as a pernicious self-sequestering that is antithetical to reason. The second sense highlights the epistemic labor entailed in actively confronting epistemic structures that gaslight what is sometimes mischaracterized as an “irrational group think.” In both cases, I highlight how epistemic acts that may appear unreasonable “within the gaslight” are, on the contrary, engaged in serious and important epistemic labor.

Type
Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , Fall 2020 , pp. 674 - 686
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hypatia, a Nonprofit Corporation

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abramson, Kate. 2014. Turning up the lights on gaslighting. Philosophical Perspectives 28 (1): 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ahmed, Sara. 2015. You are oppressing us! FeministKilljoys blog. February 15. https://feministkilljoys.com/2015/02/15/you-are-oppressing-us/.Google Scholar
Bailey, Alison. 2014. The unlevel knowing field: An engagement with Dotson's third-order epistemic oppression. Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 3 (10): 62–68.Google Scholar
Bermudez, J., et al. 2019. Philosophers should not be sanctioned over their positions on sex and gender. Inside Higher Ed, July 22. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2019/07/22/philosophers-should-not-be-sanctioned-their-positions-sex-and-gender-opinion.Google Scholar
Collins, Patricia Hill. 2001. Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams. 1995. Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. In Critical race theory, ed. Crenshaw, K. et al. New York: New Press.Google Scholar
Dotson, Kristie. 2014. Making sense: The multistability of oppression and the importance of intersectionality. In Why race and gender still matter, ed. Goswami, N., O'Donovan, M., and Yount, L.. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fatima, Saba. 2017. On the edge of knowing: Microaggression and epistemic uncertainty as a woman of color. In Surviving sexism in academia: Strategies for feminist leadership, ed. Cole, K. and Hassel, H.. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Frye, Marilyn. 1983a. Oppression. In The politics of reality. New York: Crossing Press.Google Scholar
Frye, Marilyn. 1983b. On being white: Toward a feminist understanding of race and race supremacy. In The politics of reality. New York: Crossing Press.Google Scholar
Grasswick, Heidi. 2004. Individuals-in-communities: The search for a feminist model of epistemic subjects. Hypatia 19 (3): 85–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 1991. Whose science? Whose knowledge? Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
McKinnon, Rachel. 2017. Allies behaving badly: Gaslighting as epistemic injustice. In Routledge handbook of epistemic injustice, ed. Kidd, I., Medina, J., and Pohlhaus, G.. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Medina, José. 2013. The epistemology of resistance: Gender and racial oppression, epistemic injustice, and the social imagination. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mills, Charles W. 1997. The racial contract. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 2003. Feminism without borders: Decolonizing theory, practicing solidarity. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nguyen, C. Thi. 2018. Escape the echo chamber. Aeon. https://aeon.co/essays/why-its-as-hard-to-escape-an-echo-chamber-as-it-is-to-flee-a-cult.Google Scholar
Pohlhaus, Gaile Jr.. 2011. Wrongful requests and strategic refusals to understand. In Feminist epistemology and philosophy of science: Power in knowledge, ed. Grasswick, H.. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Schroer, Jeanine Weekes. 2015. Giving them something they can feel: On the strategy of scientizing the phenomenology of race and racism. Knowledge Cultures 3 (1): 91–110.Google Scholar
Sunstein, Cass. 2018. #Republic: Divided democracy in the age of social media. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Tremain, Shelley. 2017a. Foucault and feminist philosophy of disability. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tremain, Shelley. 2017b. Knowing disability, differently. In Routledge handbook of epistemic injustice, ed. Kidd, I., Medina, J., and Pohlhaus, G. Jr. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wieseler, Christine. 2012. A philosophical investigation: Interrogating practices and beliefs about disability. Social Philosophy Today 28: 29–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar