Discerning the Primary Epistemic Harm in Cases of Testimonial Injustice

This article examines the primary epistemic harm of testimonial injustice, or, as defined by Miranda Fricker, the injustice of perceiving another epistemic agent as less credible due to an identity prejudice. I first analyze Fricker's account of the harm, which she posits in terms of a subject/object relation as "epistemic objectification." My analysis, however, shows that (1) testimonial injustice does not render its victim to an object-like status and (2) testimonial injustice necessarily treats its victim as a subject, albeit a truncated subject. Drawing on the work of Ann Cahill and Simone de Beauvoir, I demonstrate that the primary harm of testimonial injustice is more aptly described in terms of a subject/other relation, or a relation that circumscribes the subjectivity of its victim within the confines of the perpetrator's subjectivity. Using these conceptual resources to examine the primary epistemic harm of testimonial injustice not only avoids the problems I raise with the notion of epistemic objectification, but also greatly enhances our understanding of testimonial injustice, and consequently of what more epistemically just relations look like.