MIRANDA FRICKER: TESTIMONIAL INJUSTICE

According to Miranda Fricker, epistemic injustice is a transgression toward someone in their propensity
as a knower due to prejudices. It is dichotomous as testimonial and hermeneutical; where testimonial
injustice refers to that where a hearer gives less credibility to a speaker’s testimony due to negative
identity prejudices, and hermeneutical injustice occurs where a speaker is unable to understand and
articulate a negative experience due to certain prejudices.

Testimonial injustice also encompasses social and identity-based concepts of power. Social power
concerns itself with an active or passive capacity to control the actions of others. An active example of
the preceding would be if a police officer gave someone a ticket, whereas, being influenced to drive
lawfully by the officer’s capacity to give you a ticket would be a passive enforcement. As suggested by
Fricker, when social power is exercised by an agent (i.e., an officer issuing a ticket) it is considered
agential, and when it is exercised without an agent (i.e., a certain social group refusing to vote due to
racial discrimination) it is purely structural. As a division of social power, identity power also experiences
agential and structural forms, but is characterized by our influence on the actions or behaviors of others
based on our social identities (i.e., suggesting that women are emotional creatures hence cannot form
rational thoughts in difficult situations), here we are particularly interested in how this influences a
testimony.

Furthermore, testimonial injustice manifests where a speaker is recipient to an unfair deficit of credibility
based on the identity prejudice of a hearer. Credibility deficits materialize where a speaker receives less
credit than they should (i.e., accepting a certain testimony more easily due to the prestige of a specific
accent). Finally, testimonial injustice is classified as systematic or incidental. Systematic testimonial
injustice is that which is connected by a common prejudice, for example: race, and incidental testimonial
injustice is that which does not revolve around a common prejudice and is instead highly localized
contextually, for example: a bias towards a certain concept.

My critical analysis of this text will revolve around the limitations of testimonial injustice and why it may
be detrimental when applied to practical settings. To begin with I would like to talk about awareness. For
testimonial injustice to be recognized, one must be conscious of its happening. However, bias is
something that often occurs on a subconscious level, for example: a male doctor treating a female
patient with a severe illness. The complaints of the patient may be dismissed as hyperbole due to the
widely accepted construct that women are intrinsically emotional creatures, causing her treatment to be
delayed. The doctor had no malicious intent toward his patient, yet a credibility deficit and hence
testimonial injustice still occurred. As it is often difficult to become cognizant of these beliefs, we may fail
to recognize testimonial injustice, which in turn means we fail to address it. When we cannot address
testimonial injustice, it occurs cumulatively until, for instance, a person decides to leave their job due to
continuous discrimination, and therefore may lose their livelihood.

Moreover, testimonial injustice experiences a downfall by way of its subjectivity. In a practical legal
setting, the aim is to be generally objective, however, testimonial injustice concerns prejudice specific to
an individual. Additionally, this sort of injustice focuses on identity as a central point, whereas one may
argue that injustice is encompassed by several other factors. For instance, if we circle back to Fricker’s
delineation of agential power, a very wealthy person may be able to exercise that monetary power to
inflict harm upon a less wealthy individual who cannot afford to buy their way out of that harm. This may
be directly related to the offended partys, identity, but it could also be a completely extraneous factor.
In a court of law, it would have to be evaluated as both before any firm conclusion would be made,
hence it would not be viewed solely as a testimonial injustice. To summarize, testimonial injustice, whilst
viable, overemphasizes identity as a main source of injustice.