Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-rvxtl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-15T15:33:45.079Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Vulnerability, Ignorance, and Oppression

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Erinn Gilson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper aims to understand the relationship between ignorance and vulnerability by drawing on recent work on the epistemology of ignorance. After elaborating how we might understand the importance of human vulnerability, I develop the claim that ignorance of vulnerability is produced through the pursuit of an ideal of invulnerability that involves both ethical and epistemological closure. The ignorance of vulnerability that is a prerequisite for such invulnerability is, I contend, a pervasive form of ignorance that underlies and grounds other oppressive forms of ignorance. Thus, undoing such forms of ignorance requires working toward a particular form of vulnerability: epistemic vulnerability.

Type
Epistemic Justice, Ignorance, and Procedural Objectivity
Information
Hypatia , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , Spring 2011 , pp. 308 - 332
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by Hypatia, Inc.

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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Alcoff, Linda. 2007. Epistemologies of ignorance: Three types. In Race and epistemologies of ignorance, ed. Sullivan, Shannon and Tuana, Nancy. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Bergoffen, Debra. 2003. February 22, 2001: Toward a politics of the vulnerable body. Hypatia 18 (1): 116–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bordo, Susan. 1999. Twilight zones: The hidden life of cultural images from Plato to O.J. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bordo, Susan. 2003. Unbearable weight: Feminism, western culture, and the body. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 2004a. Undoing gender. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, Judith. 2004b. Precarious life: The power of mourning and violence. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Collins, Patricia Hill. 2000. The social construction of black feminist thought. In Black feminist thought. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dunkel, Tom. 2010. Vigor quest. New York Times Magazine. January 15, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/magazine/17antiaging‐t.html?pagewanted=1&hpw (accessed January 19, 2010).Google Scholar
Fineman, Martha. 2008. The vulnerable subject: Anchoring equality in the human condition. Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 20 (1): 1–23.Google Scholar
Frye, Marilyn. 1983. The politics of reality: Essays in feminist theory. Freedom, Calif.: The Crossing Press.Google Scholar
Goodin, Robert E. 1985. Protecting the vulnerable: A reanalysis of our social responsibilities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hoagland, Sarah Lucia. 2007. Denying relationality: Epistemology and ethics and ignorance. In Race and epistemologies of ignorance, ed. Sullivan, Shannon and Tuana, Nancy. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
hooks, bell. 2000. Feminist theory from margin to center. Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press.Google Scholar
Lorde, Audre. 1984. Sister outsider. Freedom, Calif.: The Crossing Press.Google Scholar
MacIntyre, Alisdair. 1999. Dependent rational animals: Why human beings need the virtues. Chicago: Open Court Press.Google Scholar
McHugh, Nancy. 2007. It's in the meat: Science, fiction, and the politics of ignorance. In SciFi in the mind's eye: Reading science through science fiction, ed. Grebowicz, Margret. Chicago: Open Court Press.Google Scholar
Mies, Maria, and Shiva, Vandana. 1993. Ecofeminism. New York: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Mills, Charles. 1997. The racial contract. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Mills, Charles. 2007. White ignorance. In Race and epistemologies of ignorance, ed. Sullivan, Shannon and Tuana, Nancy. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Mohanty, Chandra. 2003. Feminism without borders: Decolonizing theory, practicing solidarity. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Neill, John. 2005. Need, humiliation and independence. In The philosophy of need, ed. Reader, Soran. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ortega, Mariana. 2006. Being lovingly, knowingly ignorant: White feminism and women of color. Hypatia 21 (3): 56–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plumwood, Val. 1993. Feminism and the mastery of nature. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sartre, Jean Paul. 2001. The humanism of existentialism. In Existentialism: Basic writings, ed. Guignon, Charles and Pereboom, Derk. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett.Google Scholar
Schor, Juliet. 1998. The overspent American. New York: Harper Perennial.Google Scholar
Spelman, Elizabeth. 2007. Managing ignorance. In Race and epistemologies of ignorance, ed. Sullivan, Shannon and Tuana, Nancy. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Tuana, Nancy. 2004. Coming to understand: Orgasm and the epistemology of ignorance. Hypatia 19 (1): 194–232.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuana, Nancy. 2006. The speculum of ignorance: The women's health movement and epistemologies of ignorance. Hypatia 21 (3): 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, Bryan. 2006. Vulnerability and human rights. University Park, Pa.: Penn State Press.Google Scholar
Wendell, Susan. 2008. Toward a feminist theory of disability. In The feminist philosophy reader, ed. Bailey, Alison and Cuomo, Chris. New York: McGraw Hill.Google Scholar
Williams, Patricia J. 1991. The alchemy of race and rights. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. 2002. Autonomy, welfare reform, and meaningful work. In The subject of care: Feminist perspectives on dependency, ed. Kittay, Eva Feder and Feder, Ellen K.Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar